Update XVIII: 15 Miles From Lunch

[Indy Texas]

Sounds like Mr. and Mrs. Brown will need a vacation from this vacation.

[Indy Texas]

He's not going to start cooking meth when he can't even cook spaghetti.

[Indy Texas]

If Jeff ever gets his act together, he needs to send Bushie père and Bushie mère on a couple's getaway to someplace exotic (perhaps Branson). Some alone time is the least he can give them.

[Indy Texas]

bushie when are you officially moving back in with the parents?

Why would he? It's clearly preferable for Bushie père et mère to pay Jeff's rent and perhaps provide a small food stipend as a form of "stay away" money. Less headache and more room for the burgeoning train collection makes it worth every penny.

[Indy Texas]

I'm pretty sure Halloween is illegal in Oklahoma, just like the Harry Potter books.

Didn't they get a statue of Satan in front of their courthouse after someone decided to troll their constant intermingling of church and state?

[Indy Texas]

Jeff, I'm not going to say you're being held back by lack of ability. You're being held back by your attitude - not in the way you think.

You're overweight but you refuse to eat better. You're overweight but you refuse to exercise. You could probably cut the number of medications you take in half if you'd actually be proactive in doing something about your health. You don't have a job. What's your excuse for not going for a walk/jog/run? YMCA memberships are cheap - what's your excuse for not going there? You know as well as we do that you're not literally spending every waking hour of your day filling out job applications. If you are, you're wasting your time.

You view work as nothing more than a means to not mooch off mère et père and to subsidize your Braum's and Comcast bills. If you think any firm is going to let you sit around doing entry-level CADD work until you're 65, you're dead wrong. Organizations expect you to either move up the ladder or GTFO. You're not willing to put in the 50+ hour weeks or exercise any sort of initiative that is necessary for higher-level roles with more responsibility. Assuming you correct whatever went wrong at your last job, you're going to float along in neutral for a couple of years and eventually management's going to wonder why a man in his mid-30s has gone nowhere professionally and you're going to get booted out in favor of someone younger and hungrier. That process will repeat itself a couple more times, at which point your only options will be the sort of minimum wage jobs you're currently turning up your nose at because you'll be a washed-up 50 year old whose litany of health problems would probably destroy an employee health insurance plan.

[Indy Texas]

What all this talk today boils down to is that I should not stop doing what I'm doing. Everybody (except Gustaf) wants me to succeed, but thinks I should be doing things a little differently.  I think I'm doing what I need to be doing, but I do realize I could be making a few changes.  I am doing everything I need to for tomorrow.  That's all I can focus on right now is Tuesday.

I am seriously about to have an aneurysm.

[Indy Texas]

it's getting a little to close for comfort now:

www.theonion.com/articles/man-coasting-through-life-entirely-benefit-doubt,37229/

The guy in the picture even kind of looks like what Jeff might look like if he lost some weight, lost the pedo-stache and got a better haircut.

[Indy Texas]

Among the litany of issues you may have Jeff, execution is chief among them.

You do have a vision for yourself -- from what I can tell, it's to be an independent provider, a head-of-household who puts in a Dick van Dyke style day, comes home after a solid eight hours to trip over the ottoman and into the arms of your housewife and your 2.4 children, waiting for you in your modest ranch-style house with the white picket fence.

The problem is, vision without execution is worthless. Anyone can say that they know they need to practice the skills they need to build a career. Anyone can say they need to exercise and lose weight. In fact, anyone can set an arbitrary goal associated with their vision -- even baby steps -- and if they don't actually do anything to work toward that goal or vision, it's worthless.

Jeff -- this is largely your modus operandi.

If you're ever, ever, ever going to pull yourself out of this seemingly endless cycle, you'll need to actually follow through toward your vision. Based on your work performance, I suspect that your actual execution on the job is more like the type of person who hopes to hide in the workplace and hope the boss never notices you, rather than someone who is actually interested in building a career.

You're not wrong to believe in yourself, and while I don't think you're anywhere near a good judge of your own abilities, it's not wrong to have a dream. But you're painfully bad at actually following through on, well, anything.

You ought to try something very simple in order to start making progress. This is an old story about (I believe) Andrew Carnegie. Each night before you go to bed, take a 3x5 notecard and write the five most important things that you can do the next day, and rank them in order of importance.

My guess is that this list would never include "Watching four football games" or "Eat at Braums." The list should be meaningful and important things that help you build toward your vision. Make the first (as an example):

1. Spend one hour doing AutoCADD training on Lynda.com
2. Take a 20-minute walk
3. Go to the grocery store and buy a week's worth of fruits and vegetables
4. Call and email contacts at CADD school to ask about potential connections for the job search
5. Research how to sublease your Tulsa apartment, in the event you land a job in OKC

At the beginning of each day, review your list and knock off the items one by one. Make sure these items build toward larger goals and, ultimately, your vision.

I'm actually going to do that for myself, great advice!

J-Mann, will you be my life coach?

[Indy Texas]

It's still rather frustrating when you consider how many people with far better work histories than Jeff have to spend months or years unemployed before they finally get an offer.

[Indy Texas]

You are telling me that you dont own a pair of khakis or can't buy something off the rack.  You dont need a bloody tailor...

Jeff, you're 32. You can buy your own damn pants without Bushie mère chaperoning.

[Indy Texas]

If you're ever, ever, ever going to pull yourself out of this seemingly endless cycle, you'll need to actually follow through toward your vision. Based on your work performance, I suspect that your actual execution on the job is more like the type of person who hopes to hide in the workplace and hope the boss never notices you, rather than someone who is actually interested in building a career.

You ought to try something very simple in order to start making progress. This is an old story about (I believe) Andrew Carnegie. Each night before you go to bed, take a 3x5 notecard and write the five most important things that you can do the next day, and rank them in order of importance.

My guess is that this list would never include "Watching four football games" or "Eat at Braums." The list should be meaningful and important things that help you build toward your vision. Make the first (as an example):

1. Spend one hour doing AutoCADD training on Lynda.com
2. Take a 20-minute walk
3. Go to the grocery store and buy a week's worth of fruits and vegetables
4. Call and email contacts at CADD school to ask about potential connections for the job search
5. Research how to sublease your Tulsa apartment, in the event you land a job in OKC

At the beginning of each day, review your list and knock off the items one by one. Make sure these items build toward larger goals and, ultimately, your vision.

Requoted because I can tell already, we're back to usual -- quoting dates and meaningless activities like "staying with various family members," "seeing if the apartment is OK" and "shopping with Mom." Those aren't meaningful activities, Jeff. What are you going to do to start thriving instead of simply surviving?

He;s certainly the king of the mandane.  

I can't get over how they fit in several family dinners into one weekend.  

Unnecessary car trips to do things that could be done online or over the phone...constant dinners to "visit" with distant relatives or church acquaintances...taking multiple medications throughout the day...occasionally getting up to move around...

...Jeff's typical daily routine mirrors that of a 70 year-old woman.

[Indy Texas]

what was Bushie wearing at his previous job if he didn't have enough business casual clothes to last more than three days?

[Indy Texas]

Early voting started on Monday here in Texas. I have no idea what OK's schedule is like but I'd think Jeff would have enough opportunities to vote that he wouldn't have to make a separate trip to Tulsa for the purpose. Or maybe Oklahoma is so right-wing these days that they eschew early voting to avoid the possibility that "those people" might try to vote.

[Indy Texas]

And just so we're clear, Jeff, if you're going to be staying with Grandma, you will provide her with some form of compensation - be it monetary or in-kind such as mowing the yard - and she will not perform any domestic duties like laundry or cleaning for you. That woman already spent half her life raising her own kids; she doesn't need to spend the other half raising her kids' kids. At the very least, let's aim for a situation where she's no worse off for having you than if you weren't there.

[Indy Texas]

Hence the issue with people like Bushie. They don't make plans or work incrementally towards goals, because they think there is an individual plan that God has determined. Why work on yourself, when God will do it for you?

it is a team effort.  God and me.

Then one of you clearly isn't pulling his weight. And since God doesn't make mistakes, that leaves you by process of elimination. Last I checked, Jeff, Christ didn't sleep for 11 hours a day and gorge himself on fried foods and mooch off the room/board/food/kindness/money of his relatives. Christ had to spend several hours nailed to a cross with a crown of thorns on his head while being mocked and jeered by his captors. You started crying like a little girl when a cat scratched you.

So please spare us your sanctimony. You use your religion to justify all of your completely preventable personal failures. Through the lens of Christ's blood you're spotless? That's just a holier-than-thou way of saying, "Bushie can never fail. Bushie can only be failed."

[Indy Texas]

I am in no way implying I won't take it seriously, but it is not going to consume my entire evening.  45 minutes MAX.

A 32 year old man acting like a 7 year old whose parents ask if he's practicing his multiplication tables. God this is so frickin pathetic.

I hope Granny Bushie goes old school on your fat ass and beats you over the head with a rolling pin or something.

[Indy Texas]

I certainly don't expect her to wait on me at all, but you have to understand, I have to have a place to stay while I'm working.

Yes, but it's not like you didn't have the option. You're just too lazy/socially anxious to entertain the option of subleasing your apartment in Tulsa and using the money to get an apartment in OKC.

The reason I didn't sublease is that there are things I still want to do in Tulsa, that being the monthly church fellowship on Saturday's and I'll need/want a place to sleep Friday night and/or Saturday night.  I would be getting creamed on here if I book a hotel room for one of those events, so the next best place to stay is my own apartment.

Wow, so you might have to give up something you want to do in order to fulfill other obligations? WELCOME TO ADULTHOOD, BUSHIE!

Why can't you suck it up and drive to Tulsa and back for the day? It's only once a month. Don't give me a bunch of BS about the drive. I've made day trips from Houston to Austin plenty of times. Even if you won't do that, one night in a cheap hotel is going to be less than the money you'd get from a sublease.

[Indy Texas]

Oh goodness. He's keeping an apartment there for his parents to pay for so he can go to church sometimes on the weekends? This is the problem. He is constantly signing leases in other cities before he really establishes himself at a job and then refuses to sublease it so his parents won't have to continue to pay rent. He's just sooooooo incredibly selfish it's amazing!

One thing you need to realize is I'll be making $15 an hour, so most of it will be my money, not my parents'.  I know this is not what people would normally do, but I don't have to do what everybody else does in order to be right.  This is our decision, and there is nothing wrong with our decision.

The entire Brown Family needs an intervention - Jeff, Mr. Brown, Mrs. Brown, maybe even granny. They need to be placed under some sort of financial conservatorship so that they won't waste any more money on enabling Jeff.

[Indy Texas]

Okay everyone here needs to stop and STFU. Am I the only person here who sees what's happening yet again?

Jeff reaches Peak Stupidity, as he periodically does, everyone rushes in to try to get him to abort his latest trainwreck, Jeff reacts with indignation and then when people start to withdraw their sympathy and attention, he becomes repentant and pleads with us to "give him one more chance."

I'm done. I don't know how many paragraphs of advice I've written in this disaster of a forum that he has never once even attempted to follow. Some of you are honestly turning into battered wives who throw up their hands only to fall into the trap again when Jeff does the equivalent of staggering home drunk and crying and exclaiming, "I swear to God baby this time I've changed for good!" I'm not going to be used anymore. Not by someone like him. It's just too pathetic and weird and sad.

Jeff Brown is not a good person. He's a selfish, lazy attention whore and when his parents kick the bucket he'll probably wind up living in state-subsidized squalor punctuated by the occasional visit from a case worker. I believe in a thing called karma, and Jeff has done absolutely nothing at this point to deserve any good things coming to him in the future.

If eighteen "seasons" of this BS aren't enough proof for the rest of you that this is the case, then I pity you. Adios, Jeff, you fat SOB. Indy's out.

[Indy Texas]

They were mainly there to swipe the credit card.  Grandma bought one pair and Mom bought one pair plus the jacket.  We went into Kohl's to see if they had anything, but they don't like big people.

I'm not sure what role the Browns play in Jeff's life apart from swiping the credit card on his latest harebrained antics. Granny has already bought Jeff a pair of pants; I'm sure their stay together will involve plenty of her "waiting on him."

Jeff, Kohl's is basically Of Fat Flyover Country Schmucks, By Fat Flyover Country Schmucks, For Fat Flyover Country Schmucks. If you're too fat for Kohl's, you're too fat to exist.

[Indy Texas]

It is installing right now.  It will take another 90 minutes or so.

"Whoops, looks like I downloaded the 64-bit version instead of the 32-bit version. Guess I'll have to go back to watching TV while I wait."

"Finally installed, now to- oh wait, time for Family Dinner #6. No time for CAD now."

"What's my username again? Maybe going to Braum's will jog my memory."

"Well now I forgot my password. There's a question I have to answer...oh wait, forgot the answer to the Forgot Your Password Question. Time for Bible study."

[Indy Texas]

Man this makes it all the more hilarious in hindsight that Bushie wanted to pursue A+ Certification.

Is there anything hilarious about the fact that Bushie is about to start a CADD job despite being apparently incapable of even downloading the CADD software and will be working on contracts involving defense-related matters? How many people are going to die as a result of this?

[Indy Texas]

I'm going to bed!!  I'll play with this tomorrow.

[Indy Texas]

Man this makes it all the more hilarious in hindsight that Bushie wanted to pursue A+ Certification.

Is there anything hilarious about the fact that Bushie is about to start a CADD job despite being apparently incapable of even downloading the CADD software and will be working on contracts involving defense-related matters? How many people are going to die as a result of this?

Didn't you say you were leaving the thread because you felt like an abused spouse?

I guess you just can't quit Bushie?

When I said, "I'm done," I meant I am done giving him any remotely helpful or sympathetic advice. I still reserve my right to be amused and entertained by the hapless bumblings of the Antihero. I shall guffaw from my balcony and be the Stadtler and Waldorf to the f#$%ed up Muppet Show that is The Update.