Wanzology

A Diamond In The Rough Is a Diamond None The Less 

Well, all righty then. How ya living? What's going on. Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY. Yep. We are, doin it, man. We're doing it big. We're doing it with the, with the, with the book, man. #THEBOOKOFWANZ, which you can find at Amazon.com. All you have to do is type in, hashtag (that’s the pound sign) and then all one word, THE-BOOK-OF-W-A-N-Z. It's definitely not as hard as it sounds.

So, this is one of my favorites. UhHH-HUH!! It goes something like this: A DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH IS A DIAMOND, NONE THE LESS.

We all know how a diamond is made. Lump of coal subjected to lots of pressure over time turns into one of the most valuable, tough, and beautiful things on earth. Why do we not see ourselves as that coal? Lord knows, all of us have our pressures, those challenges we have to get through in life. Have you ever thought of how that pressure changes you?

For years, I was an under earner. I didn't make enough money at my day job and had to selectively pay bills in order to make it from one paycheck to the next. This led to bad credit. Lots of sleepless nights and depression for me. The only thing that kept me going was the hope that tomorrow would be different. But, oftentimes, the next day was almost exactly like the day before. Monotony almost drove me insane. I was watching a show about blood diamonds, in which they outline the process that creates diamonds. Under a lot of pressure? Sounds like me. Then I looked at the outcome. Bright, sparkling, beautiful diamonds. Why can't that be me? I started looking past my current situation and decided on a new destination for myself. Getting a better job, a bigger, better apartment, a new car. How to get those things. That, was the question.

Since I could only live one day at a time, I started making a list of mini goals for each desired destination.
I started searching for jobs a certain amount of time every day. I also started looking at different apartments, and took a greater interest in cars, the ones I liked, I got more information about them. I had lost my current job and was looking around me for things I could sell so I wouldn't be out on the streets.
When I answered an ad, the answer led to an interview, and that interview led to a new job. Within weeks, I was employed again. The job was no steppingstone to another job. This job was a career. In six months, I had caught up on all my bills and was starting to save for a new car. I'm still looking for that apartment, but my point is, I came out of that depression as a little brighter, a little harder, a little shinier diamond than the lump of coal I had been.

It can be difficult to be able to look outside of one's current surroundings and circumstances to find a new destination, but it can be done. We allow ourselves to dream, and those dreams are our destination. The challenge is to find a path to that destination and follow it.

When we do, we become that hard, sparkling diamond on the outside that we always knew we were on the inside.

Hell yeah. I could never figure out why I always gravitated to thinking less of myself. There were so many times I had to trust everybody. I had to believe what I was told. People had been telling me all my life, you're really good, you can sing really well. So why did I think differently? Most of it is because I only had what was on the radio to compare myself to. And that's not accurate. That's kind of not a good thing because the reality is not what's on Spotify or any other streaming service. Reality is like the shower, man. However, you sing in the shower is pretty much what you're going to sound like. But you see, in the studio, they can mess with you a little bit. They can manipulate you a little bit. They can make you sound different. Not necessarily better or worse, just different. And that's cool. I'm not hatin on that. The thing I'm hatin on is, if you don't have a studio, or if you don't have a means of seeing who you really are, then the comparison game will just eat you alive, man. And then you compare the comparison game with just the normal pressures of life. Bills need to be paid. Keep the lights on, keep the phone. And you know, can’t live without that cable. Netflix is a killer. But when it comes down to it, if you're not making enough money to put into your living circumstances, you're never going to be comfortable living in those circumstances. That's just the way it works. You know, you have choices. What do you do? What do you do? You can find another way out. You can find another job. You could give up altogether. I mean, there are, there are many possibilities between ultimate success and complete and utter failure. But the question always is, what are you gonna do?

I, I mean, I was about ready to sell stuff. But I just kind of treated looking for a job like a job. I'd get up, have breakfast, and then I'd start looking for a job. Going through page after page of job descriptions and headhunter services, and I was online all the time. Probably about three to five hours a day, five days a week. I had to treat it like a job, and then I would do something else, you know, maybe work on music or something, have dinner, come back, spend two or three hours looking before I went to bed, and it led me to working at Care Guidelines.

You know, I'll never forget my first day because I was on time, and, you know, a couple people were late, and I had to wait. And the first person I met was very, very nice. who let me come inside the place, but I couldn't really go anywhere. I had to wait for an administrator to come in. And when that administrator got there, just talked about everything and nothing at all. And boom, all of a sudden, I had a job. And yeah.

Man, that was one of the best jobs I had ever had. The people were great. The product was great. I was qualified and I felt respected. I was really happy to come to work every day. That's the job that I was at when I answered that phone call and then went and sung for a guy. But before then, I got caught up on all my bills. I took the advice of a friend who said, ditch one of the major banks, get in with a credit union. And I did. And I became very, very disciplined, which is not my forte. I became very disciplined about putting away money. And low and behold, I had like $500 put away and that was going to be like a down payment. What I didn't know is that in the meantime, I mean, it took like three months, four months, maybe five. All I know is that I went to a car lot the day after St. Patrick’s Day in 2011. And for the first time in my life, I signed a piece of paper and drove away in a car. I thought only rich people did that. I'd never had that experience. But here I was, 51 years old, driving away in a car. All I had to do was make the payments, pay the insurance, and I could drive. I was so happy.

I, you know, for the first time in a long time, got through the holidays and was able to, like, buy all the people that I cared for, I was able to actually buy them gifts. It was AMAZING! After the turn of the year, I started learning programming and taking on more responsibility, You bet. That was me. It was going so well, so well.

There were a lot of times that I still didn't think very much of myself. But I reminded myself that I was like a diamond. I had been under enormous pressure. Made it through, found a job and that job was the catalyst that started my life change. I, I don't think I could have done anything better. So I have a suggestion for you if you are not sure you're heading in the right direction. Make sure that you're looking at where you could be and be very, very methodical, very, very thoughtful. Consider the possibility that the road that you're on needed a direction change. Life is not a straight line. Hither and yon. Sometimes you go in circles. Yeah, man, life is, life. So, the question always is, how are you going to handle that? How are you going to make the next right decision? It's always going to be up to you, but good or bad, make sure that you stand by the consequences of your decisions. If you make a bad one, learn from it and move on. You'll probably get another opportunity to display this newfound knowledge that the last mistake just taught you.

That's what happened when you were a toddler. We don't learn how to walk. We just learn how not to fall down as much anymore. And be careful of how you think about yourself. Remember, you’re a diamond. In the rough. A DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH IS A DIAMOND, NONE THE LESS, and that's you!!

Right on. I really appreciate you being here for this episode of WANZOLOGY!!!

Go take care of yourself. I'll see you later. Bye.