Providential - A true story you wouldn´t believe

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Do you know that feeling, that you have to do something.....but can´t quite remember what?
This story is just that.
I remember being told to write it but I can´t remember what I was supposed to tell you. What I do know is that everything I am going to tell you really happened, even though it may unbelievable sometimes.

Hit Rewind to start from Chapter One

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Chapter 30

EGO has 5 main ways to hold you back:

1. Envy & comparison

2. Entitlement

3. Impatience

4. Craving external validation

5. Perfectionism.

Now I did not spell out all the EGO items in the previous chapter, I only took out 1 & 2 the lines I thought bothered me less.

So how about Impatience? Well, that is a virtue I still own, I have learned to deal with it but it´s not my forte.

Now here comes my big problem; Craving validation.
I guess that is the root cause of why I messed up so often in relationships. When times got troubled and I started doubting any girl beautiful to the general eye of the world could persuade me. I sought their affection as a sort of compensation for the pain, and they validated that I still had what it took.

One left, perfectionism. If you want to do something you should do it right, but nobody is perfect. Not even when your given name is nobody.

Not being perfect never really held me back. Starting as a DJ I had no technical skills. But I knew what my audience liked, I felt them, I could read them and the crowd kept growing.

The same applies to any of my other jobs. I would jump in with no skills, come up, float around, pick up some skills, build a career, and get bored.

Once I have the skills it´s like I get the been there done that feeling, but nowadays starting something new is scary.

In the past, I did not really have that problem. My Tigger me used to jump into everything without thinking, that is how I broke my arm skateboarding.

I was a typical Tigger wearing a Nike T-shirt because I would just do it. I must have had the skateboard for a week when I thought, let's try a 4feet ramp. It was a ramp (Dutch for Disaster). The same for DJing, can you play two sets for 1 hour he asked, I did not even think about it. I just did it.

Not sure when I lost my inner Tigger or if it was even a bad thing. I do know that moving to a place where I was a nobody changed me a lot. It gave part of me the confirmation that I actually was a nobody with no skills and no opportunities.

I was dependent on what others offered me. What kind of offers can you expect from a village with 200 people in times of crisis, and in an area where you grow up to do what your father was doing? Especially, when I did not have a father, or family of any kind.

During that same period, the unity that I felt with Stephie started changing.
Her health was getting worse, which meant that more tasks landed with me. Stress had a very negative impact on her causing her to feel the need for more financial security and I needed to provide that.

There was just a small problem. Living on this hill in the middle of nowhere caused the first temp agency to be a two-hour drive. And the jobs they offered would all be in the vicinity of the agency. So my old ways of making money failed instantly.

Option two was to apply for seasonal work in hospitality over the course of this summer. Stephie could get some help from her mom during the months I would be working in a Dutch Beach Bar in Torremolinos.
Now they did not need a DJ, not even a bartender. I ended up serving people on the terrace and the beach. Something I had hated in the past. Back in those days, my seniority allowed me to hide behind the bar. Now, I had no choice.

The boss of the joint had a choice as he had hired more staff than the current crisis required, and as I was not a star at serving food and drinks we soon had The Talk.
That talk ended my beach bar career before it even started, no cocktails and dreams for me.

It did leave me with a huge problem. I spent our last money renting a room in this seaside town, planning to work here during the summer. That would have given us some financial breathing space to get through the winter.

Those plans had vaporized with that one talk. I did not see any other option than to get my deposit back and go home, but I was not allowed back.

Stephie told me to stay and find work there. She did not care that there was non. It was early in the season and the 2009 crisis just started so bookings were low and nobody was looking for staff for at least another 6 weeks.

I used the contacts I had, to possibly get myself a job. I had an intake conversation but needed to wait on confirmation which never came. I have not felt as miserable in my whole life as during those weeks. Knowing that I had spent the last of our savings, with having nothing to show for it.

I felt like a little fuck up, wasting the last bit of cash by blowing the only opportunity I had. Not going back home made it even worse, as I was here with nobody but me. That meant I had to listen to my own thoughts the whole day. Those thoughts could have driven me insane if I would not have listened.

There was nobody coming to help out, give me a speech or explain the purpose of this situation.
Even without anybody telling me I knew what I had to do. I had to face my demons. I had to go door by door explaining my situation and asking if they had a job for me.

It was not the asking I considered my demon, it was the rejection. And the rejection I got, enough to last me a lifetime, enough to make me care no more.

This was probably the first time in my life that I listened, that I actually heard the whispers. Not my loud mouth Ego, but their whispers.
I somehow knew that when I went out there and faced my demons I would fail. I would not find a job, but by doing so I would beat those beasts and be rewarded.

On the morning of what would be my last day battling demons, I came out of the shower noticing that something was not right. The devilish little horns I wore as a piercing in my eyelid had disappeared without me noticing.

I looked in the shower, my bed, the floor but found nothing. Feeling a little naked without my piercing I went down to the beach and applied at the places where the manager was not there the previous days, again nobody needed me.

There was nothing left to do except wait, as many people had my number and would call me as soon as they needed help.

That afternoon I got a call, from an acquaintance in the village of Bayarcal, the village near my house. We had talked, at least as far as I got with my Spanish, about an upcoming project. A project for unemployed fathers, he was supposed to lead and therefore had a say in which people he wanted to work with.

Months ago he promised me that when the time would come he would onboard me. The thing with Spanish projects is that you never know when they start or if they would start at all. But when they start, they start right away. This Friday afternoon the money was transferred, and the project would start next Monday at 6 in the morning. He asked if I was still up for it.