The Endless Search For Work Of The Once Convicted

Okay. Given the nature of this blog, it probably won't come as a shock to many of you that I have a criminal record. I'm not a thief or drug dealer, but I do have a bit of a temper. In 2001, I hit my brother during a heated exchange and was arrested for assault. I got a year's probation and a small fine...Class A misdemeanor. In 2006, a guy in a car cut in front of the semi I was driving and slammed on his brakes. We bumped ever so slightly and the jerk sped off through a red light, but not before I got his license plate number. I called 911. It was the single biggest mistake of my life.

The guy was working an insurance scam. To make a long story less mundane and much, much shorter, I ended up getting arrested and subsequently charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. You can imagine my shock, after all, there was hardly a mark on the other guy's car. He did, however, have a lot of people show up and say they saw the whole thing that weren't there to begin with. I lost my job, was forced to take the public defender, and got royally screwed in court. I got five years deferred adjudicated probation on a Class B Felony. Welcome to Hell. It doesn't matter that the whole thing will come off my record in a little under three years....that's still three years from now. .......Gimme a freaking break already....please!

I've been out of work for close to a month now. Things are starting to get really grim. Every where I go, people are excited to talk to me right up to the point I mention the felony. I'm a big guy. I make Brock Lesnar look tiny. The second someone reads that garbage, they see me as some kind of monster. I imagine I go from looking like a giant, cuddly bear to a hockey mask wearing, chain saw toting madman pretty quick. It's very disheartening. More so, taken into account I have a decent head on my shoulders and an innate ability to pick up just about anything in just a few minutes. Quite literally, give me five minutes observing the operation of a machine or vehicle and I can operate it. Couple that with a strong electro-mechanical apptitude and I prove my worth rather handily. Did I mention there isn't a vehicle I cannot operate? Well, I suck at unicycling but, then again, I don't want to be a circus clown.

So, on I go, from rejection to rejection, not giving up, but close to losing heart. You can lose heart without losing hope. Hope is the worn, tattered rope to which fools cling tightest. When you go from making nearly eighty thousand dollars a year to being not employable by Kentucky Fried Chicken....life pretty much sucks. Oh well...there's always hope.