Tee on Tuesdays 12.15.16

Happy Tuesday & welcome back to all my teeLARGE.com weekly readers, for some crazy reason you people keeping coming back for your weekly dose of foolishness. Special hello to all my first time readers….I do a weekly “Tee on Tuesdays” post every Tuesday at 10am. That’s my  only guaranteed post on the site. The others posts are just at random. I’m a work in progress.  

Speaking of random it’s currently 1:56 am, exactly 8 hours and 4 minutes before this post will go live and here I am just entering the second paragraph. I am super exhausted, I just walked in the door from doing a late night HangmanHsv job. I mounted 2 additional TV’s and put together a TV stand in a previous clients home. The customer is happy but dang I sure burnt the night oil on this one.

How about I do 10 random things (stream of consciousness) and then call it a night, Deal?

1. Ahhhhhhhhhh shooot! I just remembered my big sisters birthday was last week December 3rd and I didn’t call or contact her. That was the same morning my homeboy passed. I was pretty out of it that day. No excuse though. My sis actually subscribes to my blog so Tonnie if your reading this I love you and I’ll call tomorrow! and HAPPY BELATED!! 

2.  About 20 minutes ago I thought I had lost $175. I know I’m exhausted cause the money was in my wallet the whole time. My wallet was in my pocket, on me. The whole time. I tore up the living room and dining area of my apt. That’s how drained I am. 

3. I wonder does my apartment complex think I am just a disgruntled resident, or am I the “angry black guy”. Lately they have been under my skin for the dumbest of reasons. How does an entire building get a noise notice? Why doesn’t the apartment/resident that is making the noise get the noise complaint. For all of us to get a notice and I emphatically know I haven’t made a peep much louder than a whisper is upsetting. I was fire hot when I saw that note on my door. I also got a cigarette warning. I have never smoked a single thing a day in my life. Now that I think of it,, I’m never even home! We’ll see how this thing plays out. 60 day notice anyone?

4. My dad will be in town this weekend for 2 weeks. This will be the first time in well over a decade we’ve been in the same city for that long. This should be good. He came to Maya’s first basketball game this past weekend and yelled at the head coach to bench Maya for making a mistake on a play. All you heard was “hey…..bench her”…. as he pointed to his granddaughter from the sidelines! Classic moment. I’m still laughing! I love my dad and am super thankful for his role in my life at this point in our lives. We’re both in a good place. 

5. I interviewed for a job today. I also got a couple calls/emails about other job openings in town. Looks like I”ll be back in someone’s hr/recruiting department shortly, which isn’t a bad thing. The position I interviewed for today has ALOT of potential upside. Smaller company, but growing and on track to continue growing well into 2016 and beyond. I actually enjoy recruiting, the people you meet, contacts your make. the challenges of getting someone to the interview process and then thru  completion/on boarding. I definitely should have opened my own recruiting/staffing firm years ago when I had the chance. I’ll still keep my HangmanHsv thing going. I’ll always be entrepreneurial, it’s in my heart. Never Not Working. 

6. I let the guys in the barbershop convince me to keep my beard at its current thick/full height. Next time I’ll be my own man and get what I want. I am tired of this thick. I really want the light shadow look for awhile. 

7.  In my intro paragraph did anyone get a little tight when I used the term “you people” ? I did that on purpose cause I hate the term “you people”. It’s the worst way to categorize a group. Honestly if I was with a group of friends and someone rode by and shouted out the infamous “n” word I would probably just look crazy. But if some rode by and called us “you people” I would probably instantly morph into Liam Neeson’s character from the Taken movies. ——-> 

8. It’s now 2:43 am and I just dozed off for 20 minutes. Let’s knock out these last couple bullet points coming off this mini-nap when I should be sleep. 

8 & 1/2 The last time I went grocery shopping it was for Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve been on the go so much I haven’t really eaten. I desperately need a meal fixed on a stove, or an oven with helpings of love, spoonfuls of care, and maybe a few shakes of that Zatarans or Tony Cachere’s Cajun seasoning. I’m out here looking like a “sponsor a child” commercial.  

9. Continuing my my life long quest for the perfect backpack I bought  a new one today. This one is alot like a Patagonia bag (which is what I really want). The only difference is the name is NOT Patagonia, and it’s about $150 less than a Patagonia LOL.  I am a sucker for a new backpack. It’s almost an automatic buy a couple times a year for me. I don’t even know what I am looking for in a bag that will make it the perfect bag. I assume I’ll know when I finally find the perfect one. This one is pretty nice so far. It’s only been 6 hours though so….the verdict is still debatable. Man do I sound like a woman describing her latest purse of what ?!?!?! 

10.   <——- Yes Lord the tenth bullet point. I can finally stop writing and go to sleep. It is 2:51 am. I have to mount a TV for a new customer at 10am. I am thankful that I stuck to my promise to write a new blog post everyweek if it kills me. This weekly commitment is helping me dedicate myself to something which is good for my commitment phobia. I’m so exhausted right now….Jesus be a pillow. 

I’m gone. 

—– Tee.

Instagram & Twitter: @teeLARGE

 

100 Likes…..I don’t deserve this type of love.

1:07 am 

Daylight Savings time got my head so messed up. We go forward an hour and I can’t tell you if that helped or hurt me LOL. 

So late last night (24 hours ago) I put up a new picture of me on Facebook. It actually wasn’t done on purpose. I changed all my social media icons to the same updated picture and I guess FB posted it to my wall as well. Well can you believe 102 people and counting have hit the like button?!?!? I’m not Kevin Hart or nobody that gets 10000 “likes” on every single post. So for me to get 100 people liking one thing, and that being a picture of me, is easily the highlight of my 2015 thus far. 

Now that I have 102 people’s attention, I need to figure out how to keep it and ultimately turn that into something that puts food on my kids table. Which brings me to my next point. Purpose. 

Purpose is such a enigmatic word to a person that has an entrepreneurs heart. From the outside, people judge you by saying “Oh he just don’t wanna work for nobody” …but from the inside all my entrepreneurs, dreamers and creators know that you CAN’T simply work for anybody if that doesn’t involve YOU walking in YOUR purpose. I mean, yes you can as in you can physically be in attendance at a job yes. But you can’t work for anybody because the whole time you are there, there is a burning inside of you that your dreams are dying, your purpose is unrealized, while your working everyday to build someone else’s. So what happens is you have that classic scene in Jerry Maguire where your back is against the wall and you decide to just set off blazing your own trail. Except the movies isn’t real….life is real. Bills are real. Debt is real. So you get scared and you convince yourself to stay on that job a little while longer. 

The best thing that could have happened to me was not being at LG anymore. Gone is the cushy cubicle job. Security blanket snatched out from under me. Now I am forced to reexamine the fiber and fabric of who I am. DAILY. What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? What do I enjoy most in life? What do I work hard at? I mean really truly work at…where do I apply myself at, not just do enough to get by…..what do I truly give effort in doing? What can I learn from past failures? These are not light questions. If you feel uncomfortable reading them, imagine how I feel answering them. 

The answers to these questions and more were startling to say the least. Eye opening is another great adjective to describe the process. But I’m so blessed by it. That’s why I love this blog. I can document my journey and share my flaws as I’m on the way to my GREATER. 

In closing, I am almost there good people. I feel it, its right around the corner. Too many things are happening in my life right now. God I see you working homie! It’s our time. Ideas and creativity are flowing thru my veins again. Not only that but the bu$iness plan to support those ideas is coming to me as well. 

Okay…that’s enough…. my eyes getting heavy…it’s 1:41am…. peace. 

-Tee 

100 likes…. I’ll take those gladly….and one day I’ll do something to pay all 100 of you back! Your kindness will be rewarded! 

Cliche…after Cliche…

1:29am 2/27/15

Rappers wanna be ball players, ball players wanna rap….and nobody wants to write. Yet oddly enough here I am up at basically 1:30am with a burst of energy to write a blog post similar to a rapper in the studio seeking rhyming words for his newest single, while watching Lebron James ridiculous highlights on Sportscenter. Oh the irony.

When did hard work become synonymous with staying up all night? **Sidenote me using the word “synonymous” in a sentence is what happens when you spend 48 hours in the house because your city is paralyzed under arguably 2-5 inches of snow. So you study words for an hour or so each day to strengthen your vocabulary**

But I digress…

Why can’t we work hard AND get a fairly respectable nights sleep? Let’s examine my day. I’ve already admitted I’ve been in the house the whole day because good ‘ol Huntsville, Alabama decided to take another city wide snow day. I woke up around 11:30am after a long night the night before. I ate a late breakfast with my daughter and played with her for awhile before getting my actual day started. No shower, shave or any cleaning today, unless your counting what I did around the house. I did wash dishes, straighten a closet of two, and a few other small household chores.

The bulk of my day was spent at the computer. I am working on 3-4 projects at the same time. I’m not sure if God is taking me back into the conventional 8-5 work life ever again but I do venture onto Indeed.com, Monster and Careerbuilder just in case. I told God I am not walking thru any door (opportunity) this time, unless its with Him. So whatever door (opportunity) that comes my way, I know it is truly from Him. With that being said, I don’t have a formal job, I’ve applied for some, but I haven’t missed a beat.

The highlight of my day was landing a gig for Unknown Lyric (UL). I’ve stepped into a management/booking role recently for these two talented musicians. Take a acoustic guitarist and a classically trained violinist who both share a love of rock, pop, jazz, gospel and hip-hop and you get “Classical Fusion” the perfect instrumental music genre.

The guys are booked for the TedX Conference in Birmingham, AL this Saturday and so I made some calls and landed us a gig at a popular upscale restaurant nearby for Saturday night. It felt good getting that first booking under my belt. Now I can go get UL on the “Grammy’s” or something LOL! Ask any real salesman and he/she will tell you there is nothing like the confidence your first sale brings. You feel like you can conquer the world.

This gave me the energy to work on the other few projects the rest of the evening. I’m not ready to reveal all of those yet but if you know me personally then you know that one project is everything I do with TeamML6. Micha is building something super special and I am thankful to be apart of that process as well. I am in a really good space right now creatively and I am thanking my Higher Power for every bit of this energy. It is so true that daily time spent with God will unlock everything else. Gone is all negativity including negative environments and negative people that I used to try so hard to keep near. Let Go & Let God is truly the motto.

So all of this brings me back to being up at what is now 1:51am full of energy and in the mood to work. Reading a couple online articles, real ones not the dumb ones people post on Facebook. Doing research people! I’m also replying to emails and crafting some new messages to send out. I’ve traded working 8-5 to fuel someone else’s dreams, to working anytime-anywhere to fuel my own. Cue the Janet Jackson song.

On that note I’m gone good people…..this was fun, let’s do it again soon.

-Tee 2:03am 2/27/15

@teeLARGE (instagram) // @teeLARGE (twitter) // teelarge40@gmail.com

Frozen Thoughts.

12:38 am, Fri night/Saturday morn (depending on how technical you want to be)

Huntsville is snowed/iced in under a 1/2 inch of slush / I been in the house 89% of the day = A perfect time for a new blog post. Don’t expect any order to this. I am going to just type until I get tired.

I’ve been in the South 15 years. I grew up in Indianapolis and I am trying to keep some Naptown in me, but even I acted like I had never seen snow today. When it was actually falling earlier today I lit up like I wasn’t from Indy, like I hadn’t seen a city COVERED in INCHES of snow before (TWSS). We got maybe a half inch and I (along with the rest of my city) was driving like if you were to hand a bible character a set of Mercedes keys.

It’s always good to be around your kids (for us parents out there) on snow days. To see the sheer joy and excitement my 4 year old had for the weather was a blessing. We took a walk, and did a little playing outside. She did this really cute thing where she tried to place her footprint inside of mine, which meant she was taking these gargantuan over-sized steps just to go from one of my footprint to the other. Reminded me of the spiritual “Footprint in the Sand” poem for a moment or two.

The biggest accomplishment of my day was the amount of cleaning and organizing I got done. One of the things I have been trying to do is become better in this department. I am definitely not a “dirty” person, but I am not a neat freak either. I’m the “not-put-things-back-where-they-belong-er”- That’s my title. I’m the guy that walks in the bathroom, grabs his toothbrush out the holder, and the toothpaste out the drawer…brushes his teeth then leaves the paste cap on the left side of the sink, the toothbrush in the drawer and the toothpaste tube on the right side of the sink. Everything displaced or misplaced. Chaos. Or I get undressed in like 3 different rooms. My belt and shoes in the living room, jeans at the foot of the bed, and t-shirt in the bathroom or draped over a dining room chair as I make my way to the kitchen. So you see, its not exactly “dirty” it’s just unorganized and stuff everywhere.

So lately I have been challenging myself to clean better. It really started last year. See back when I was dating the mother of my children, she was a pick-upper and didn’t bother to fuss about stuff like my stuff being everywhere unless it became super ridiculous. Then you fall in line for a few days/week to make her happy and all is well. I never had the discipline to see the error in my ways and be better. But last year I dated a couple women (1 for 5-6 months, the other for 2-3) that would nag the absolute sh*t out of you over a unorganized home. They were both super organized detail oriented women. In order to date them you had to clean/organize daily. That change of pace really helped me break bad habits. See, I’m not against cleaning at all, I had just gotten lazy and been okay with being lazy. So this is a public thank you to both of you for helping me. Its because of you that I was so focused today and have been attempting to improve my household organizational skills these last few months. I decided that I liked the Travis who kept a organized home a little better than chaos Tee. So the moral to this paragraph is you can take something from every relationship. Those two women are awesome and although we never had anything long term, I am seriously better having met both of them.

It’s 1:03 am now. I been at this for almost a half hour. You may be tired of reading….but I still have more to write….writing is so healthy for my soul. I just don’t do it that often. I have to let it build up a little.

I’m still working on my book. It has taken on so many different forms over the last year or so. Devotional, Inspirational, Motivational, Biographical…..I don’t know where this thing will end up. Hopefully it will end up “completed” LOL.

Ha! It’s 1:08am now and I just got tired of writing….literally 5 minutes ago I was ready to write 10 more paragraphs…then sleep hit me.

This was fun. See you guys soon.

-Tee