25 years in the tattoo industry.
Is it an industry? I suppose I hear the term all the time. However, no matter what they call it, I've been doing this twenty five fucking years man.
I am very proud of the fact that I have been working with my hands in such a way as this, to feed my family and paying some bills. I've been making a living for this long, doing what I do. Making your imagination work for me and interpreting your words into a reality on paper or skin.
But hey, it wasn't all that.
I feel blessed that for so long life gave me this purpose to fill a day with. I could have done anything in my life but there was nothing else that came along that I would have loved as much as this and I will let you know that there were jobs before this, that I did love.
I did work that I can still see today.
I did work that you cannot.
Living in my travel trailer today, I wish I was home to take photos of the photos I do have of those times. I hold onto them dearly.
In Deadwood South Dakota I can see my work in a casino that used to be really big but now it's all divided up into different casinos. But my friends and I helped build that into what was at one time, Deadwood's biggest casino. I built the walls and the ceiling.
In the ceiling there are fiber optics which make the ceiling look like stars in the night sky. Some of them even have constellations in them. That was pretty dope. I guess I have always loved working on a crew.
After a workweek, on Friday, we would get our paycheck and buy up some beer after work and go jumping in the lake at a lil swimming hole called Jenny Gulch. I remember how hot and grimy we could get working in those conditions and how the lake water would wash that away after the first jump.
Maybe I liked working with those guys then. Some of us are still friends from way back when.
I used to work on a crew doing exploration gold drilling. Talk about dirty. I loved dragging back 500 lbs pipe. There was something manly about it. My favorite job on the drill rig was the roost on a core drilling rig.
I was 40 feet above the deck moving 300 lbs pipe over to a stack by rolling the top of the pipes into position. We did use cranes.
I'm not that strong.
What was cool about working this kind of job was that we were making all kinds of money but had no time to spend it. We didn't get time off until our hole was drilled and so I wouldn't have a day off for six weeks. But that was three paychecks to spend. Instead of saving it. . .
I traveled on it. The best things in life.
These jobs aren't in order by anything other than my favorites. Kind of in order.
I worked as a t-shirt artist a couple of times before I was a tattooer. Silkscreens. I did like that job and if I didn't mess up, I got to use the extra shirts to make my own designs. Which honestly, for as shitty as my art was back then, I was still proud to wear it.
Moreover, during all of these things I was into escaping. Maybe I have always been this way.
I have always escaped through some porthole.
Reality really hasn't been my thing ever maybe.
The reason I love tattooing. The number one reason, I love tattooing so much, is probably rooted in my childhood. It's just you and the coloring book.
Humming along to tunes in your head. My favorite job of all time.
Doing something that makes people around me happy, while all the while, not being present.
I check in here and there but for the most part, I escape into the present. Yeah, I'm present in the the present at the moment there is nothing from yesterday and there is no dream further than the present. I can focus solely on the task at hand.
I'm not gonna be cocky and say every client has been happy with my work. Hell, even I am getting stuff lasered of my body for ten years now. But fuck you if you think nobody's been happy.
Regrets?
What is a life without regrets?
Work wise, I feel I gave every request a solid effort at least within the realm I'm comfortable in. I've made up for my mistakes with people if they ever let me make up for it.
I wish I created more stuff. More paperwork. More canvas art. I wish I had the work to show for all those years of tattooing. I kept the sketchbooks. I have those at least.
I had a job once at a franchise called Golden Coral.
I loved this job. I was a baker and in this position, I was able to work by myself in a small kitchen bakery away from everyone else. I liked it cause it was an easy job and it made people happy while I did my brainless job. Not that I didn't have to think.
But I didn't have to create anything either.
Our bakery in there had me, and I didn't follow recipes to a T. When I made that crab salad, it was like no other crab salad you ever had at a Golden Coral. I know. Cause I made a lot of it my way. Jajaja
The way I remember it, I was young... and people would just come from miles around to just eat plates of crab salad. And some did.
They would wait for me to make up a batch and that's all they would eat there.
I know they came for the meat loaf. They have some pretty consistent meatloaf, cause no matter where I am In the country... it tastes the same.

After that, I worked for a couple bars.
I was a bar back. I wish, I had learned that skill to its full potential. Being a bartender would have been such a great side hustle for me.
I was barely 22 when I was barbacking in Elko, Nevada when I met the iconic Merle Haggard. I was drinking a MGD with a few olives in it.
My old driller used to call them trailer park martinis.
I told Merle that's what they were called.
He said bring me one.
So I did.
He took a big swallow and told me it was the first taste of beer he had had, in sixteen years. I was elated!
I didn't know what that meant.
He left the beer on a table where I gave it to him, and went on stage. He had so many people happy to see him. He will forever be a legend.
I love my experiences in life. Even the shitty ones.
Over this quarter of my life, I have had some great people help me along the way. I have made some lifelong friends and like you, I have suffered somethings, I would rather not live out again.
I'm lucky to be alive today.
25 years in tattooing and not all of them have been great years. I spent a couple years taking care of myself on probation, state and federal. I have had a few disturbing episodes of heavy drug use.
I know the dangers of a relapse.
Moderation is a balance act that I do t think I've ever explored.
I know that I'm not unhappy with my decision to smoke weeds and drink once in awhile. I don't feel so white knuckle about things and my criticism is way less harsh.
I see my kids deal with the same problems I had as a youth, and I'm amazed with how each of them deals with their stuff in their own way.
25 years ago, I opened a tattoo shop called the Sleeping Dragon. It was in Elko, Nevada. I was young then. I had a lot of promise.
I had no discipline.
I had a lot of responsibilities I didn't t take seriously. I suffered immensely for the consequences of my decisions and somehow those fed me to more opportunities which led to more complicated circumstances which led me to more opportunities.
Life is full of them.
It's true.
This weekend was Easter. We went out to the desert and we had an awesome time.

This was camp Troxel/Blankinship during Easter. Pretty dope for social distancing. This was a beautiful day. I got to see some cool stuff out here in the Ironwood National Monument. Pretty green in our desert. The cactus were budding and flowers were present everywhere we went.
Today, I feel really good about the life I'm living. I don't answer to nobody, and nobody is sucking the life out of me. I am blessed to have great friends, who I consider, closer than my own family in a lot of ways.
My real brother, Jerimiah, lives in this town and I barely see him. I would think that since we are all locked down, I would see more of him but maybe he works so much that he's too busy doing his own work during the Corateen.
I love hanging out with him, I'm not so sure about how he feels about it. I guess I'll never know.
So 25 years ago... tattooing was hot, man! I could do like ten tattoos a day. I remember the first day I made a thousand dollars. That was so much money back then. I didn't have to save it either. I would spend money as quick as it hit my hands.
The popular tattoos I was doing back then was anything south western. Native feathers and six shooters. Tasmanian devils were a hit depending on how you dressed him... flower tribals... yeah a lot of flower tribals. Huge back when I started.
   In the realm of matrix programs, I feel like this is my tenth life! Jajaja
    25 years...
    There have been a few people in and out of my life that really tried to help me through it. Just think about your last 20 years. How many people helped you along the way? Do they take precedents over a quiet mind, like me?
  When it is quiet in my empty space... I think of you. Not in a bad way. Now that I am older, I think back to how much you were going through when you thought of helping me out. I think about how you listened to me when I felt the world walls a crashing.     My little ant hills. Now that I am older, I can remember hearing you talk about the stuff I couldn't hear.
    Thank you for your efforts.
    Wether it ended ugly or it just ended.... I couldn't hold it against you. I've been a stubborn ass my whole life. I pray you don't hold it against me.
   I am lucky. If nothing else, I am that. As I think over the last 25 years I am one of millions who have learned to snatch failure right out of the jaws of success. I get up like the sun and start over again.
   I know myself well enough now, to know you then.
   Now is all we got.

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  This song has been hitting me hard as fuck lately. I do wonder what I'm out here chasing. I'm an older man now. Definitely passed the half way point.
   I threw off the bowlines an I took to the sea. I regret nothing. But these thoughts come at me when I seem to be the weakest.
   Sometimes I even wonder what I am doing here. Writing to you. Are they letters? Is it a blog? Is it a short story? Like what the fuck am I doing here?
  I am happy not very many people look into these random writings. This is just another layer for someone to chronicle my psychology later in some statistical way or even better somehow. Use it to figure out my password or use it to steal my identity.
   Hopefully you do better with it than I have. I'm just now learning myself as I am.
    I miss how easy life was for me in Rapid City. I had earned everything I ever pulled from it. I love the struggle of earning it again. I must.
  This covid thing gives me a lot. Time to rest from being a burnout tattooer. I have time to think about things. I have time to witness "family" in ways I didn't live it when I had it. Some families are tighter than a frogs ass. I appreciate seeing that. I love seeing different methods of parenting.
   I'm ready to settle down. I want to start building something. Start my new matrix.
   I'm not sure when... I know that I am open to it.