True Gifts Come From Within

02 March 2007

Why do Bad People always receive Rewards

I’ve been through enough in my life to have come across some really bad people. They don’t shock me like they use too, but its funny from whence they come. What makes me stop and think recently is Why Do the Bad People Always Receive the Rewards and the truly good people seem to be trampled?

I won’t bore you with my entire past, because I could really show too many less than good people, but lately, I keep asking when will my suffering stop. There have been people from my past who were truly ugly people. I don’t mean ugly in the since of physical beauty, but rather that their interactions with me were so dark that it kills the flowers from their vines and the light is suffocated out of existence.

One such person was David, who I worked with at the young age of twenty years old. David hated me because I was a young kid who worked hard and received the opportunities he felt he should have received. I shined for the first time in my life and the Director took a personal interest in my development. I was moving up the corporate ladder in a Marriott company while David didn’t like that I made his title and position within a year of being with the company. David has been struggling to get ahead for more than five years without gaining any traction. He suffered with a cocaine addiction that threatened more than his job at times. On one occasion he told me that he had already decided that my death would not be worth the cost of the blow it would take to get rid of me. To this day I know he was serious about his comments, which alarmed me with how easy he could consider killing another soul for something like a job.

It made me think for the first time in my life as I realized he was considering my life to have so little value that he considered it wasting cocaine to use it in my demise. David thought so little of the life and soul within me that getting rid of his competition or problem by killing me would somehow enrich his life. All of this over a job!

Then we have to talk about my current boss. Jorge is the CIO of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corporation and he got upset when the owner (Lee) asked him to find a position in the IT team for me. I also think he was offended at having to hire a gay man because while the owner of TBW is gay, Jorge has surrounded himself by a very heterosexual team of people. That is a very difficult thought to prove because Lee is gay and has a very close relationship with Jorge. Jorge has such an ego that it interferes with many aspects of running the IT department at TBW. For instance no one can hold a title anywhere close to his own. The man who has been managing the infrastructure, Cecil, has had the title of Technician III, not Manager, however designed a vast and complex infrastructure that supports an intricate environment.

Lee hired a new person without Jorge’s knowledge at the beheadst of an outside consultant who identified a series of problems plaguing the TBW IT Team. While Wayne has the title in the HR Department as Vice President; he is only aloud to use the title of IT Manager as to stay offending Jorge. Why does one person’s ego force everyone else away?

Jorge would not be bad if he only had an ego, but that is just the start. He placed me in a dead end job, making no money and with no capabilities to prove myself. I have almost twenty years experience and I am a gifted project manager. I am also a great IT manager/director, but I was denied every opportunity to prove my value or worth and my attempts to identify issues and suggest solutions only furthered my isolation. I am the laughing stock and the joke of the TBW IT department and then someone finally had the nerve to ask the question based on a rumor that Jorge himself was spreading; did you really get your job by sleeping with Lee? I asked who would even indicate such a thing and I was told by several people, Jorge. That he openly made such statements on a number of occasions to everyone in the IT team. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but the truth was not what anyone wants to hear when the person controlling so many is depraved, sick and twisted.

I recently found out that Jorge has set it up so that anyone calling for a reference to TBW about me has to get their reference from him. He is directly black balling me. My fault was to ask my roommate if he could ask his good friend Lee, who has a nation-wide mortgage company, if they could put me to work doing anything. Jorge has me so locked down that my only way is out and he even went as far as to indicate that very sentiment to me. For more than a year, I’ve been trying to get out, but he has taken care of several really good opportunities with bad references.

How can so few people impact a life so negatively and why would they want too? I just want another job and I want to give him exactly what he wants, which is for me to leave TBW. I don’t care where I go or if it even strengthens my career at the present time, it could be doing almost anything in IT industry, I just want away from the depravation of this company. I’m tired of working hard and being a good and honest person only to be shit on by those around me who take their queues from a bad people. The Jorge’s in this world seem to have all the good opportunities, the right positions and the ability to kill what dreams we may have for ourselves. So why continue the fight when there is no chance to win? Why play the game? Why deal with a living hell shadowed by nothing but gloom and darkness?

10/05/2007

I wrote this distressing piece, but never posted in to any of my bloggs. In the time that has past since writing it, I found a good job surrounded by positive people. The people are the reason the change has been so rewarding and the reason I have excelled in a short period of time. It is odd and shocking how the people around you can so negatively or so positively change your life. What a positive change can happen when people other than yourself believe in you and your abilities or just give you the opportunities to prove your value and capabilities.

I took a project management position with a company called Silverpop. They are a very energetic company that moves at a fast pace. My bosses, Waylon and Garrett, are both positive and challenging. I find myself both eager to learn the immensely complicated products that are extremely well designed inside our doors with extremely gifted professionals in every division of the company. Working with such gifted people is such a joy that challenges a person in all the best possible ways. The curve to learn that which I don’t already know has pushed me forward making me a better professional and teaching me skills I did not already posses. My immediate boss (Waylon) has guided me through the doors of a very complicated position and I find myself striving to improve and sharpen skills just to make sure I can please him and make his superiors grateful for his role within their ranks. It is not lost on me how sharp the contrast between my current role and my previous hell. Silverpop has everything I was struggling to find for so long and removed me from the existence of a living hell.

There are good people in the world just like the bad ones. I’ve met my share of bad people like Mike and Jorge, but I have also been influenced by some truly gifted and amazing people as well. People like the Director at Marriott who saw something in a twenty year old boy struggling to make a man out of himself. Ellen Freeman is a great friend and powerful Media Powerhouse who not only created a mega-powerful career in a man’s industry, but made her voice the only one the industry listened too. Influences personally and professionally from as close as my first boyfriend; Rick Mickool, who has become such an industry leader that his ideals are sought after and his opinions listened too while his next steps are regarded as trend setting and cutting edge. There are many other wonderful souls who have touched my life and when I originally wrote this blogg I could not see their influence struggling to surface in hopes of changing the direction I once headed.

I know how negative adulation and perspective are hideous reminders of our current situations and can paint a dark picture. It is hard to see the sun light when you are surrounded by dark clouds blocking it from shinning through. I have to say that I was closely arriving at the point when this was first written where my world could not see those rays of light shinning through the clouds that enveloped me. Self loathing and hate were all I could see because they were the last gifts given to me by someone who impacted my life for far too many years. He and all of his ghosts have left my life and the sun has cleared the skies once again. I am happy and can see people like Jorge for what they truly are…a pebble in my shoe that needs to be removed. Once you clear all that obstructs you from the good person you already are, you become the only obstacle blocking your own path. The words I typed above were profound and remain on this page as a reminder of the steps I’ve made to move my life forward. There are positive influences, but they must first start from within you. It is as true today as it was for the seven years I walked in darkness; the sun starts to shine from within my own heart and will reflect what emanates from within me. Jorge was given power over my life by me and because of me. He is gone from influence because I rid him from my life. He is the bad person I wrote about, but only to those who allow him to be. He too will receive what he gives and that will make him a truly lonely, desperate and dark person in his own life. Let him live his life and answer for his own darkness, because I chose to live my life in the sun light and shine on all of those with whom I can positively affect.

May your own life be enriched by the rays of hope I send to you. May the warmth of my sun help spark the flames within your heart giving your life the power it needs to positively effect change! The greatest gift I can ever give you is to Love, Honor and Respect all of the people around you; but most importantly, give the same gift to yourself too!

My gift to you,

Todd M. Dobson

Ode to Big Brother

Ode to Big Brother

I have an older brother (Kenneth Alden Dobson, Jr.) that was born March 9^th of 1966 while I followed May 24^th of 1967. Our mother did the best job she could, given her circumstances, but our childhood left an indelible scar that shattered our youth while making manhood a difficult journey at best.

I was the typical younger brother who looked up to his older brother. As a child I followed Kenny like a puppy would his guardian. Kenny was smarter and far more adventurous than I could ever imagine being, so being in his shadow made me feel more like him then I normally would. We knew I was different from the earliest times in my life, but around the age of six years old when my brother learned what the words queer, gay and faggot meant; surreptitiously appointing these names to be adorned by me, we had no clue they were appropriate given my inclinations. I was young and the names hurt, but I still desired to be just like my brother. Not a day went by that our mother didn’t chastise me with: why can’t you be more like your brother? She was ruthless with her faint sarcasm and deliberate attempts to remake me in his image as did our father. No matter how hard I tried to be just like Kenny, there was nothing I could do to appease our parents.

As my reverence towards my brother gained more fervor, my parents continued hoisting his likeness upon me while Kenny simultaneously hated my attempts of emulation. I would replicate his every gesture because that is I thought my parents wanted, but he halted my attempts by the use of physical force and strength with a good old fashion beating to deter my efforts. Kenny eventually joined my parents with his own battle of taunts and verbal abuse that lasted until he left home for the Navy.

It wasn’t until he started molesting me that I realized my older brother was not someone I wanted to emulate any longer. For one year I suffered at the end of his physical abuse hoisted upon me in a way that two brothers should never do. I was forced to succumb to his sexual needs and during this carnal feast of my innocence he forced his way inside me. I understood at far too young an age what pain was all about. The physical abuse increased during his brutal exploitations of me for the only reason I can assume of keeping me from vocalizing our escapades. During this year long struggle, I found something in it that felt natural to me. While the concept of what my brother was doing disgusted me, my realization that the physical contact with another man felt far more natural than the few times he tried to forcing me to have similar encounters with my younger sister and a neighborhood girl.

I had no desires to perpetuate the same horrific physical desires on either girl. I realized that I was in the midst of my own sexual awakening that would have naturally come with a struggle later in my life had it been allowed to takes a natural progression. I was far too beaten, submissive and shy to have made the larger leap that I was forced to make at the age of 13 years old had none of this occurred.

I’ve spent a number of years in therapy understanding and forgiving the violation brought about at the hands of my brother. I may have the clearest picture as to what the family dynamics really were during this time in all of our lives. Kenny’s brutality did not stop with molesting me for one year nor did it start at its inception. He continued using me as his personal punching bag and means to release stress, but at least he knew he would never sexual abuse me ever again. My retributions for being the lesser Dobson started with my father, who made it my brother’s personal job to toughen me up and make me into a real man. Kenny was directed to his attacks against me as the golden boy of the family and who could do no wrong. Kenny being the exact replica of our father with whom Kenny despised with all his heart was given an engaging quest to remake the fag into a man. As we grew I watched as the hate for our father grew within my brother as an unattended tumor consuming all in its path growing until it takes over its host. Kenny remained constant in his vigil to never be like our father, but he was reminded daily by his reflection, his walk, his speech, his mannerisms and his temperament that they were identical in every way. Each day was another day closer to becoming our father and that thought seemed to be another step closer in the opposite direction he truly espoused.

My brother’s dream was to find a woman that he adored and could honestly love. Our father might love a woman, but he was taught that the best she could ever be was a sexual outlet for her man. My father believes that women were to be dominated, demeaned, tortured and their only services other than feeding, taking care of the kids and the house; was to service her man well. He could and should have many different women taking care of him, but his wife was chattel and was only a dominated toy for his whims. Kenny found the woman he greatly desired and one who made him the happiest I’d ever seen him. He found his Venus after many years of drug abuse while she spurred in him the desire to clean up his life. He fought and won custody of his son from another woman and started building the future he always desired with his soon to be wife. Things seemed to be going well for him, but the drugs soon became a far too frequent call to action exemplifying just how difficult a fight for possession of his soul would really be. No matter what they did as a family or how hard he fought against the hold crack seem to have on him; he could not break free from its grip. Not even for his dreams of love from the one woman and son he cherished above all. Kenny without acknowledgement had succeeded where my father never could; he had if even for the slightest time, the dream he never imaged he would receive: a loving family and he was the devoted father and husband.

As crack continued to ravage his body and mind he lost that woman who still loves him with all her heart. They had a beautiful little girl that my brother wasn’t even aware when she was born because he was on a drug induced bender. He never knew how he almost lost both his cherished wife and precious little girl that night due to a chemical substance that holds his life within its grip. My brother with few other resources available to him has moved in with the one man he loathed and hated with all his heart. The vile insides of him has turned that once loving father and husband into a psychotic man with a thirst only to destroy the woman who once set his world right-side up, but who is now seen as keeping him from his baby girl.

It is amazing to me how psychoses can drive the very sane into insane acts. He left his once peaceful and cherished home to live with our father and upon doing so let his exasperated wife know he would not fight her for custody of their child. Knowing deep within his heart he could not be the father she deserves. However, my fathers influence over a drug riddled man has led him to fight for custody of the girl with whom he has barely spent time. He has had more days with drugs since her birth then he has spent with his precious daughter. The misguided drug influenced man is being filled with spite and hate from the original source that turned a decent boy into a molester and later turned an act of attrition from the heart of the same grown man into a raged filled drug addict. Influence from a man so filled with contempt for himself turning out to be just like the father he once hated for the very same reasons his very own son loathes him.

Now I am faced with the perils of sitting in a court of law and telling this very same story filled with details that would turn each stomach of the listeners. Exposing the abuses I suffered at the hands of my brother, guided by our father who vilified his eldest son. Kenny Junior and Ken Senior want custody of this precious little girl for all the wrong reason. My brother can no longer be a parent to even his son who is living in the environment we grew up under. I try to hold back the disgust that fills my heart for the way I was raised and knowing this precious little boy (Ethan Jacob Dobson) is under the same manipulations. Knowing that the once honor filled man who stood in front of me with great remorse in his eyes, yet unable to get out the words, was becoming the man he hates - our father. My sleepless nights stem from the fact that I can no longer allow my brother to continue this cycle of abuse with his son and daughter. However, am I prepared to stand against him?

Can I be as courageous as I need to be in order to secure the future for his little girl? Will I, in turn if she is victorious with her claims of self dependence from my brother, have the heart to watch my nephew be dragged away by Louisiana Social Services in hopes he may have a chance for a life away from my brother and my father? The chances that the courts would give custody of this wonderful little boy to my older sister (Kimmy) or that she would accept the challenge might be a fleeting grasp at hope. I know better than to challenge my brother – a drug infested man who will die by these drugs one day soon. Could I even consider if the Louisiana Court system would even consider granting custody to a single gay male, the remainder of my family would object vehemently.

My heart can’t quit get beyond knowing if my actions are disingenuous to my brother, my father or even to myself. Do I even consider such actions as an act of revenge while claiming to have forgiven him for his many acts of aggression towards an admiring brother? Am I honest with my intent or am I fooling myself and others. Asking these and many other questions seem only to garner fewer answers than I find additional questions needing to be asked. Can there be any answers found with a clear heart when the acts lead someone to suffer? Who am I to appoint suffering to any one person?

With Discourse All Around: Peace & Serenity are the Balance in Life

3rd of September 2006

With Discourse all around:

Peace and Serenity are the balance in life!

As my previously written thoughts show, I am angry about the state of the world. While I feel it is important to shout my stance from the rooftops, I feel it is equally important to experience the beauty in the world around us.

I am truly a fortunate man and love my life. As messed up as my life is with as much prejudice and hate surrounding all of us; I am thankful every day I open my eyes and take my next breath. I don’t want anyone to get the wrong ideal that I am just an angry man and there is nothing else I can focus on besides the injustices in the world. Life itself deserves to be lived to the fullest and I strive daily to improve my life while simultaneously enjoying where I am.

I have traveled extensively throughout the United States, Canada and abroad. Experiencing cultures such as Greece, France, The United Kingdom, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Mexico, Canada and every state in the inland United States just to mention a few. Joyful experiences from every destination teaching me deeply about the courage people around the world must have in order to face every day. We open our eyes and face the world head on and that is all we can do. I love that we have that opportunity and every day and every step we take we should bend down to smell the flowers. Take in the beautiful colors. Enjoy the simplicity of the architecture of God’s design while taking in the sweet aroma that presents itself as you discover each unique entity. The smile such simple treasures can bring to our lips is amazing. Slow down and enjoy the simplicity of everything around you. As the children play and as people go about their lives, watching the love exchanged by two people is amazing.

Even more amazing is to experience such beauty in a person. I have shared my heart with only three people, but one of the three taught me the true meaning of love. The years we shared were truly the best of my life. That ended badly, but remembering the love, the joy, the sheer simplicity of what we shared opened me up more than anything has ever done before. I came from a broken and abused home and have experienced the worst there is out there, but this relationship showed me the very best there was to experience. I will never forget what gifts I have received and someday I will be able to enjoy another, just as I did the one.

Find the peace you can give yourself by simply loving who you are. Don’t worry about what anyone else says or believes, just know you are who you are and that is a gift from God.