It shouldn’t matter, but it does.

Thanksgiving is in a few days and I’m extremely depressed. The holidays came fast this year. Halloween flew by and Christmas is just four weeks from Thursday, so New Years is five and a half weeks away. I’ll be able to make money for two or three more weeks and I’ll need enough to pay bills into the future since January is usually slow. I love my job working as a delivery driver, these days for Grubhub, but the cost of doing business is high and things have not been as busy as they should be. I suspect it’s more sabotage aimed at disarming me indirectly. Whatever the case, I’ve been making much less that I should be able to and I’m as lonely and isolated as ever. On a few occasions, I’ve had guests but once a month they turn out to be hired for the same line of questioning, some kind of welfare check by the State, but nobody will answer my questions about why, rumors of studies, investigations, and so on… it just goes on an on… and if they’re legitimate guests, someone comes around to see what we’re doing right away. I am on 24 hour watch by people who do not have my best interest in mind – that much is clear.

Whatever I ‘say’ is always refuted and there’s been concerted effort to deprive me of income and social support as I challenge my landlord over illegal water bills and press for answers about involvement with family. He IS committing fraud, but doesn’t think he should be held accountable, so any kind of vindictive deprivation seems justifiable to him… and he has deprived me of a lot. Two weeks ago, I got a lawyer who has since disappeared on medical leave – which will be the third to be taken out, if she’s gone for good, as my landlord does not believe in accountability. This is the amount of progress there’s been this year. I have been trying to get information and I keep getting denied. I will probably publish this year’s letters soon. But, starting with the post 2025, since I said this ‘has to be a year for justice’… I think my landlord decided it should not be. I have spent the year corresponding with multiple people – law enforcement, chamber of commerce, oregon attorney general, housing, water, and now the oregon law center. There is no question about the fact that the law is being broken and the landlord is stealing at least $40k a year from tenants – the problem is enforcement of the law, and a landlord who would rather tell lies and run interference. He has now moved in someone who’s all about the holidays and decorations which, I’m sure, will not be vandalized like mine was – complete with loud music and social gatherings that don’t get complaints – while I still get stalked by people looking for problems, or just flat out slandering me in public. Recently, I was told he’s moved in a woman who claims to be the ombudsman for a mobile home park on the other side of town, so now there’s a new unofficial resident expert on the law to disagree with me, the lawyers, and the courts – the Jehovah’s Witnesses are all about what people believe… and they don’t care about the truth.

I still find puddles of what looks like someone urinated next to my jeep after I’ve been in a restaurant picking up a delivery, so I suspect someone is accusing me of that after I’ve gone. I’ve been accused of watching x-rated videos on the job – which isn’t true, either. And I’ve been accused of being a sexual predator, or called a child by people whose sole intent is to keep me from having any friends. There’s one woman who yells and screams at me whenever I see her – while she’s usually collecting cans and bottles like an addict – she literally follows me around and takes video, keeps calling the police when she sees me, but nobody want’s to identify her or engage in healthy communication about why she’s so upset. Probably unrelated, for years there was a child in town who would scream in terror when she saw me and call police, telling them her father was in the area and violent… ??? Maybe the same teenager who yelled at me to keep away from her from across a parking lot a couple of weeks ago, being given a pat on the back by the woman she was with. I don’t know these people. All I’ve asked for is some answers to my questions and some accountability by those in charge. I am owed that much and more.

The involvement of my Aunt conspiring against me with the Jehovah’s Witnesses is disheartening. She’s a whore. Seriously. These days, she’s calling herself a missionary to avoid paying taxes. She’s had so many husbands I’ve lost track of what her last name is (and nobody will tell me that, either), one marriage or divorce after another for drug-related financial reasons. She’s good at mansplaining stuff, sounds like an authority on everything, and has a lot of experience with business law from being an office manager and paralegal. I recall her always championing for for a popular cause, but serving herself. I’ve never had a close relationship with this woman and she doesn’t know me, except through my mother who I also don’t have a close relationship with. She’s my mother’s sister and would visit once a year. My girlfriend and I stayed with her for a month in my late 20s – and never again – she fear mongered my mother into thinking I was abusive, gaslighting me over issues from her past, and I had a talk with my mom about this, about how my personal relationships were none of Aunt Sue’s business. Apparently, she got into some money when my grandfather on my father’s side died and I think there was a significant amount that also came from one of his close friends, Bob Spraglio. She’s helped con my mother out of one thing after another promised to me since I was a teenager, if not earlier, and it turns out she owns a number of businesses in this town now, my cousins are in the area, and nobody wants to give me any information? Nobody will come tell me when my father died? Why? I think she’s on the side of the people who wanted me to drink myself to death, upset that I’ve been sober for over a dozen years and perfectly capable of managing my own affairs. Maybe there’s inheritance in some kind of trust? There is land, gems, art… and I still want some answers. My father had written memoirs, also. What happened to those? I hear, ‘Don’t you have some of your father’s shirts in your closet? Isn’t that enough to remember him by? – and I want the guns I was promised, too. I am owed.

I expected things to go differently this year. I expected things to go differently last year, too, since so much had been published I thought would bring some things to light and I wouldn’t get left out again. Instead, they went out of their way to exclude me and this year things have been even more insulting. I ‘said’, thinking out loud in the privacy of my own home, I will confront my cousin and he’ll talk to me, and his mom cares about him… so he changed his nametag and tried to disguise his identity, pretended to not know me. I ‘said’, also in the privacy of my home, I will get my aunt’s last name from the article written about her owning Alley Gyros… so they removed the framed copy from the counter and hung it way up on the wall where it can’t be read or reached. I ‘said’, also alone, I’ll contact my friend Pete who helped enable them one Christmas, and he’ll give me information… but he was one more mysterious death this last year. I have been face to face with everyone in my family and they all chose to turn their backs on me, given the chance to talk to me. I’m sure everyone knows where I live, anyway. Ironic how it’s even in the Bible, that surely a man’s greatest enemy is his own family.

Stagnation appears to be the theme, but things are not as hopeless as they seem, even as the ground freezes and the days have become so short. I still haven’t put doors on the jeep… maybe today. I still don’t know what I was forced to sign in an apartment in Philomath so many years ago. I still have unfinished projects gathering dust, unpaid bills, and unfulfilled dreams. But I’m still succeeding. I’m suffering from financial setbacks, but my cost of living is low and I still make more than I spend. I could afford two new tires (finally), so now a trip to the coast for Thanksgiving is feasible – the road I want to go down requires traction. And although it’s mostly small talk in passing, my job gets me out of the house and puts me in touch with some of the nicest people. I do have people constantly calling the cops about me and my jeep (this is verifiable), but I also get flirted with a lot… I’m blessed to be in a place with some of the most beautiful women in the world and to have enough local fame that I’m always meeting new people. I have a nice house and plenty to eat, though I am still just making ends meet and crawling out of debt. I was just given an additional thousand dollars in credit, but its not real money – it is good peace of mind to know I’ll make it through the Winter, all the same. The holidays have always been hard, but even harder since Barbara passed away four years ago. Where I want to go for Thanksgiving has been the plan every year, but got derailed for one reason or another. It’s where we got picked up and swept out by a sneaker wave, where I almost lost her once. This year will be healing – and I’ll check the tide table first – but it will be emotional. The image server is down again or I’d post a photo… going through pictures from the last 20 years has been emotional, too. Chronic technical issues have broken things up, and much thought has been spent on Mexico, as well… Christmas’ past. This year, the holidays may not go quickly enough, but I still maintain that unbreakable faith and hope for a better future. Things are not as bad as they have been, and surely things could be worse. There is plenty to be thankful for, and hope for all that’s owed.

Maybe it just doesn’t matter to anyone else…