Decisions for the Remainder of the Year, the State of the Chaos, Projects, and the Return of the Nemesis

This year has been nothing but total chaos, as far as

society is concerned.  I really wanted this to be a great year for me, everything was starting to fall in place and life was beginning to return to normal after a bleak period of internal struggle that still haunts me since leaving the Army. 

The Pandemic/Mass Paranoia Hysteria

This coronavirus, which people think is as deadly as the Spanish Flu but is no different than the Hong Kong Flu has altered much of my progress and has made me wonder what I’m going to do this coming semester for school, which starts on Aug. 24.  As of right now, my college, CSU-Pueblo, is taking a hybrid approach, mixing classroom instruction with online teaching.  Also, the school is going to be placing strict face mask-wearing and social distancing enforcement throughout the campus, which is going to result in a totalitarian-like environment.  That is something I do not want to experience, or endure.  Plus, this is also election season so if Trump gets re-elected, I don’t want to see a bunch of crybaby kids whining that their presidential pick didn’t get elected and demand to have a safe space so they can cry about it.  Even though my school is not very far-left as you may think, in fact, there are a lot of Veterans that go to the school and even some of the faculty are Vets themselves, I don’t want the far-left supporters to start getting violent to anyone who supports Trump after the election has been complete.  I know if that happens, I’m going to school carrying my pistol with me and if anyone tries to assault me because I don’t agree with them, they’re getting shot.  I don’t put up with that bullshit, and no one should in the first place.  On a final note, people really need to do their own research on topics and stop relying on mainstream media for their information, because all they are now is just propaganda machines to get people into an unnecessary frenzy. 

Current Projects I’m Working On

As the world descends more and more into chaos, I think it’s best for me to work on some projects to keep my mind as sane as possible.  The first one is something I’ve been working on and off for the past couple and decided to move forward into turning it into a book.  It’s going to be the memoirs of my time in the Army, and the title of the book is going to be Ass Kissers and Toxic Leaders: A memoir of my time in the US Army.  For more information about it, here’s a link to read more on the project.  The second project I’m planning on doing is a science fiction novel, largely influenced by the current state of the world.  I’ve begun to make a map of the US in the year 2305, which may change because it’s not set in stone as of yet.  I will be writing background stories of places in the US, and how they came to be in the three hundred since the present day.  The novel is going to be a dystopian future of the world, which sadly is where the planet is heading.  In blatant terms, we’re heading into a dark age.  On a more positive note, I’ve decided to put together a publishing company, mainly for my work for now, which are songs, poems, short stories, novels, etc.  Once the publishing company gets organized enough, I will then decide if I want to add more authors into the fold.  I’m thinking about doing this instead of going to school this semester, considering it may become a shit storm as the school year moves closer to Election Day.  Plus, I decided to download Grammarly to help with my proofreading.  I’ll admit, I suck at proofreading and I could always use as to help as I can get, especially now I’m going to start writing quite a bit.  And, I’m looking into buying an editor program for my computer, because I’m not into paying for a subscription to have a service online.  I simply prefer to pay for a program one time than an online service with a monthly subscription.  Also, I need to get my band back in order.  For those who don’t know, I have a band right now, called BlackAdder.  It was formed in Oct. of last year, and things were going pretty well, until Feb. of this year.  What happened was the guitar player, whom I’m not going to mention who he is at all here, thought his ego was shrinking and tried to make changes on his own without consulting me or the drummer.  First off, he said he didn’t like my playing of bass but would never tell me about the issues he had with it.  He assumed I was mad that I had to play bass even though I was more of a guitar player, which at the beginning of forming the band we talked about and all agreed on who will be playing what.  I agreed for him to play guitar because he was much better at it, and I was happy that I was jamming finally for the first since God knows when.  So, what this little prick tried to do was bring his friend who played bass to the drummer’s house, which was where the band practiced, and say he was my replacement without saying anything to me, and the drummer was quite shocked about it.  They did eventually jam a little bit because the drummer is always up to playing music.  However, the bass player our guitarist over ended up becoming rude and very disrespectable to the drummer.  One thing that my drummer friend has is a stutter in his speech.  He was born with it, and simply can’t help it.  Well, this asshat of a bass player mocked his stutter, and of all things, the guitar player snickered at it.  In short, both of them were kicked out of the drummer’s place immediately.  A couple days later, my drummer friend called the guitar player to tell him to get his equipment out of the jam space, which was in his garage.  I didn’t know about all of this until about a week after it had happened, which was when my drummer friend told me about the situation.   I was so fucking pissed when I was told about it, especially with the fact that my band was going to play its first show in the next week and a half.  Afterward, I and the drummer played just the two of us, reworking our material and also starting to look for a replacement.  All the while of doing, the mass hysteria began to happen and then a lockdown, thus putting the band on hiatus until further notice.  Now, it’s time to get things going again, we found a suitable replacement and now we must move forward.  I still don’t understand why our former guitar player did what he did.  My drummer friend said he did have some emotional issues he couldn’t control, and he also did have an ego problem.  In the way, I sort of felt he was intimidated by me is some weird way.  I mean, I didn’t think I came out in that way, I’m usually pretty quiet and keep to myself.  He knew I was a Veteran, and at times he would go and say how he couldn’t be in the Military and so forth, which I didn’t really care because I believe the Military isn’t for everyone.  Still, he was quite a sad person for doing what he did, and it’s best he’s no longer in the band. 

Politics are Ruining Everyday Life

Seriously, and it needs to stop!  I’m sick and tired of seeing major sports bow down to black lives matter and kneeling to the National Anthem.  I was so pissed off when I saw Fenway Park paint a banner outside the stadium that said “Black Lives Matter”.  Also, I thought the NFL learned from their mistakes for allowing players to kneel during the National Anthem, considering the league lost a substantial amount of revenue as a result of it.  Now, the MLB is doing the same, exact thing and this really gets to me because I love baseball! I’m a sports card collector, been one since I was four years olde and this garbage is making me not want to collect anymore.  Hell, I don’t even want to play my sports games anymore, either.  Politics has not only ruined sports but is ruining everyday life in general.  It’s time to take a break from it, people.  Everyone has different political views, and no one doesn’t want someone else to shove their views down other people’s throats because they disagree with them.  Live with it. 

 

Olde MSB is at it again

This guy really doesn’t know when to shut up.  If you want to know more about his dude, go to these links here, here, here, and here, because I don’t want to sound like a broken record.  The sad thing is he actually kept quiet for two years before opening up his big mouth just recently in a recent blog about why he left Facebook.  I’m not linking his blog onto mine, because I’m not promoting that jackass and I don’t want to expose any of you to his poison.  Anyways, this guy needs to get a life and stop rehashing shit that happened five years ago now.  As you may know, it was my fault for doing so, and I did apologize from I’ve done.  However, all he did was just spit in my face and laugh like it was a joke.  I’m beginning to think I should’ve never even apologized because of how he reacted to it.  This is the same guy claims to be a Christian, and be a churchgoer of sorts.  All I see of him is a CINO (Christian In Name Only), one who only uses faith for his own personal benefit and picks and chooses which parts of the bible to follow, and discards the rest.  What I always found ironic with MSB, is that he claims I became engulfed into a cult-like state when I was in the Army, but yet he is part of a cult himself, which is Christianity.  It’s doesn’t have to be a denominational form of Christianity either, it’s all a cult anyway, just as any other religion in the world.  Also, he again pulled the “Just because you’re not in the Army anymore, doesn’t mean you’re safe” crap, threatening to call the FBI on me as though I’m parked outside his house, or driving around his neighborhood.  For what?! Reading a blog that is public to everyone in the world?  Plus, if you’re going to call the FBI on me for something that happened five years ago, they’re going to wonder why you waited this long to call them, and chances are they still can’t do anything about it.  Honestly, if I were you I would be worried about them, considering after you kept getting banned on Facebook months at a time, the FBI probably has a file on you for promoting hate speech, which in this sad state of the world we live in now anything you post on Facebook that they don’t agree with they’ll just label it as hate speech.  Finally, my grammar does not suck.  Ever since using Grammarly, I have seen that there are a few mistakes here and there, and if you think two mistakes are terrible, then you really have some issues.  In fact, your grammar isn’t perfect either so I wouldn’t talk.  Perhaps its because you’re from the south and inbreeding, is commonplace, so standard grammar is probably all fucked up beyond recognition.  

You’re the one that is a narcissist, not me.  Why don’t you go back to writing about retro games, which is something you talk about that actually doesn’t come out of your asshole, and is an interesting topic.  Your readers will thank you in the long run.  Seriously, chill out, smoke some weed, get laid, or whatever you do, just leave me alone!

 

There will be more to follow as time progresses.  I will post the map of the future state of the US once it is complete.  Also, I will be posting excerpts from the science fiction novel in the coming months, so stay tuned.

                  

         

Thirteen Unpopular (and Definitely Controversial) Opinions on Music, Radio & the Recording Industry

1. Music is the soul of God personified through music. End of discussion. I have spoken.

2. Music is art first, Business second.  That is why I never cared for teeny bopper garbage like Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, or anything else from that realm.  Also, I never liked bands like KISS or Def Leppard who admitted they only made music to get rich from it.  Now, yes there is a business with music, and most of the time it can’t move forward without it.  However, music is an art and should be made the way it should be: to create, express, and show artistic merit.  It’s meant to have a soul within it, which manufactured teeny-bopper crap sorely lacks. 

3. Disco paved the way to the manufactured, soulless dribble of teeny bopper garbage that seems to rule pop charts nowadays.  It also paved the way to the likes of dubstep, techno, and any other form of music that uses only samples instead of actual instruments.  That is all.

4. Hair Metal is the worst Heavy Metal genre, hands down!  I mean, seriously, who in their right mind would want to dress up like a chick, and try to pick up chicks by screaming like your balls are being squeezed in a vice?  Also, the plastic-ness of the sound that most of those bands have is just revolting.  No wonder why guys in Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, and Slayer used to make fun of hair metal every chance they got.  And on that note….

5. Emo is shit as well.  Emo is to punk rock as what hair metal is to heavy metal.  More whiny ass sounding music with bands looking like chicks, trying to get chicks.  I remember years ago, one of my friend’s cousins was an emo kid and we used to make fun of him because he was wearing jeans that looked like his girlfriends, so we asked him if he borrowed a pair from her.  Also, he had a friend that had a haircut that made him look like a chick.  I think he was gay too, I’m not sure. 

6. Punk Rock, in a sense, did save Rock N Roll in the seventies. It did return it’s “back to the basics” view that it once had in the fifties and the early sixties.  In fact, the reason The Ramones formed in the first place was to play music reminiscent of what was popular before the psychedelic period in the late sixties.  By the mid-seventies, Rock N Roll was really becoming the complete opposite of what it stood for in its fifties heyday.  It was no longer rebellious; rock musicians were looked at as more like millionaires or businessmen than performers, and it was just losing its fun.  There needed to be something to shake the foundations up a bit, and it turned out to be punk rock.

7. Hip Hop has some good music, but you have to dig deep for it.  You really have to look hard to find some really good hip hop.  For easy picks, there’s Beastie Boys, OutKast, and much of the eighties hip hop groups like Run DMC and Public Enemy.  The Roots is one of the very few that actually use real instruments, and Jurassic 5 mixes samples of jazz into their music.  And above all, they don’t rap about drive-bys or promote crack smoking.

8. Nirvana was a good band, but they weren’t the best to come out of Seattle.  Nirvana came around at the right time, their first album Bleach was released in 1989, which was the time when major record labels were coming up to Seattle to sign bands from that scene.  Also, the decent promotion that album got, Nirvana did fairly well in the rock underground in the US at the time and even had success in the UK.  They were perfect candidates for a major label, so they got signed.  The irony is that their label didn’t expect Nevermind to sell no more than 250,000 copies, boy, were they in for a surprise.  If you want to check out some really good music from the grunge scene, the other popular bands, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains were much better musically.  However, check out some of the lesser-known bands from that scene, you’ll be quite surprised.  Here are some to check out: Melvins, Gruntruck, Screaming Trees, Tad, Green River, and Mudhoney. 

9. Jazz and Rhythm & Blues should never be forgotten.  They are the basis of all the music that is made, and what people listen to, to this day.

10. We should’ve listened to Lars.  If you don’t know who I’m talking about, it is Lars Ulrich, the drummer for MetallicA.  He was one of the first, if not the first, major rock star to stand up against the downloading service Napster back in 2000.  He knew from the very beginning that downloading music from the internet was going to ruin the music industry, and told record labels to start cracking down on people for getting music without paying for it, stealing more or less.  However, Ulrich was hit with a lot of backlash from fans, calling him a greedy multimillionaire rock star who only cares about his balance statement at the end of the month over his own fans.  He, along with his band MetallicA, would eventually sue the site Napster, and win, thus turning the free downloading site into a paying downloading site.  Unfortunately, the damage was already done, and once Napster was gone, other sites took over like Kazaa, Limewire, Pirate’s Bay, and so forth.  As more people downloaded their music over paying for it, the quality of new music seemed to have gotten much worse, to the point now that almost everything in music whether it’s pop, rock, metal, etc. is filled with samples, autotune, drum fill-ins to the point it sounds like literal shit.  Thankfully, the past couple of years people began to see the error of their ways and returned to purchasing music instead of downloading it for free.  However, there’s still a steep hill to climb from it. 

11. MTV should just die.  The once-great music cable station is no longer a place to listen to music.  In fact, it hasn’t been a music station for a long time now.  I blame the show The Real World, that was the beginning of the end for MTV.

12.  Radio stations needs to up their game if they don’t want to end up like MTV.  Simply put, go back to the roots of early FM rock stations, play whole records in their uncut entirety, and play the music that is not on Billboard charts.  Go underground, there are many great undiscovered bands out there.

13.  Finally, Lou Reed is the greatest singer-songwriter that ever lived.  No one comes close, I have spoken! 

Lost Souls with Uncertain Futures

This has been a blog that was in my mind for almost a couple years now.   I know I haven’t written anything for almost two years, which is something I need to get back into considering life for me is so much better when I do write, or to create in general.  For that, I decided this blog would be a good start for other things to come.  As I said earlier, this has been in my mind for quite some time now, and it’s time to finally get it out into the open.  About five years ago, I lost two good friends of mine under different circumstances, some being my fault and others completely out of my control.  Finding it ironic though that I lost both friends around the same time, and after thinking about it they also seemed to be nearly on the same parallel of each other.  Both went to ITT Tech, a now-defunct college which both guys received degrees at.  Plus, both had the same recognition of being gamers, liking Star Wars and Star Trek, and even comic books to some degree.  Also, looking back as to how I stopped being friends with both guys, over time I began to realize that it was all really for the best in the long run.  Both guys, MSB and DJO, have a substantial amount of issues between the both of them, so much so that along with my personal issues at hand I needed to be out of my life completely.  So, here it is, a blog for me to give myself closure to the situation once and for all. 

MSB

This gentleman I met while I was in Basic Training at Ft. Knox back in 2009.  Of all the recruits that were in our platoon, he was one of the few cool, like-minded guys that I befriended while going through the rigorous training on becoming a Soldier.  Unfortunately for MSB, he was unable to graduate with our platoon and therefore was recycled into the next company that was to graduate.  He did complete Basic Training, along with AIT, and went into the Regular Army where he served for about five years total.  As my time in the Army, his time was not very good at all.  MSB had the same issues I had to deal with: toxic leadership, bad morale, dumbasses, and no way of trying to better himself due to those circumstances.  He did eventually get out of the Army through a medical discharge, I think largely for having Asperger Syndrome and some other ailments he obtained with serving.  Over the time after Basic Training, I and MSB stayed in contact with one another, I was sort of sad that he was leaving the Army being he was one of the very few people in the Military I knew of that had similar tastes as I did.  However, if he was injured or unfit to keep serving then it was best that he got out when he did.  The reason we stopped talking was largely in part of my doing: I was joking around with him online, sort of praising him in a sense of his Military service because he felt his time in the Army was a complete waste.  However, I took the joke way too far than what it should have gone and MSB got pissed off and blocked me from just about everything he had on the internet.  At first, I was upset and surprised he did this, considering I was also an editor for a page he owned on Facebook.  Then, after about six months, I tried to get in contact with him to apologize for what I did, and in turn, MSB just blew me off and didn’t respond at all.  After that, my original Facebook account got hacked into and I was unable to log into it.  For some reason, I always thought it was MSB who did this, considering he was a pretty tech-savvy guy.  My final attempt to try to bring peace with him was promoting his blog page to the masses, which all that did was only infuriate MSB more and began to threaten to call the FBI on me.  That was the final straw for me and once I found out about that I concluded my attempts on trying to bring any kind of compromise to him.  At the time when this was happening, I was suffering greatly from injuries, a TBI, and eventually, a nervous breakdown which led to me being suicidal from my unit’s overloaded work schedule that really had no meaning except to make our leader’s OERs and NCOERs look good.  After the nervous breakdown I had suffered, I began my medical discharge process out of the Army which was concluded five months later with me being medically retired, but that’s another story for another time.  Since then, I began to notice that MSB did have numerous issues with himself and I wasn’t the only one that he did this to.  For instance, there was a mutual friend of ours who he also cut ties with because he simply suggested he should leave the New Orleans area, which is where MSB is from and went back to after leaving the Army.  Also, he stopped being friends with many people for other various reasons, such as political views, currently being in the Military, and even simple disagreements of such minute topics like UFOs.  MSB, overall, seems to put out any sort of reason to stop talking to people, whether if it’s logical or not.  Plus, later on, MSB wrote about me being suicidal and just mocked me for it, which was literally one of the worst things you can do.  Although he somewhat apologized for his comments, that was still a hit below the belt for even just mentioning something like that.  For being a Veteran himself, MSB is well aware of the number of Veteran suicides that happen every day, twenty-two to be exact.  Also, over time I began to see the hypocrisy in MSB that really showed he wasn’t a very good person.  For instance, he claims to be a Christian, but yet doesn’t practice much of the beliefs in that religion, such as forgiveness.  Also, he claims to always try to rid his life of toxic people, which I don’t disagree with him the least being I do so myself, but it comes back to how he rids people from his life, like as though he tries to find a reason to stop talking to them.  There is a fine line of getting rid of toxic people from your life, and just being stuck up altogether, which MSB is the latter.  Also, MSB simply acts too much as an opportunist when it comes to friendships, religion, business to the point he really doesn’t deserve to have any friends or be successful in any venture he gets himself into.  Finally, his stance on marijuana use I find not agreeable with.  MSB seems like one of those that support the legalization of its use but doesn’t want to associate with anyone who does the substance, whether for medical or recreational use.  Sort of reminds me of an ex-girlfriend of mine, in a sense.

          

          However, despite all the negative views I have with MSB, I do hope he has his life in order and does have a successful life after the Army.  There are a few things I do actually agree with him, for one, on what happened to him on Facebook.  Any of you who didn’t notice, after the 2016 presidential election, Facebook began to fully censor people who had conservative views, whether if it was posting videos about certain topics or even just making memes and posting them onto the website.  MSB was renowned for his meme-making, and Facebook kept banning him for posts he did a couple years prior.  The situation got so bad for him that he ended up deleting his account, and the music page I was part of before he blocked me.  Now, let me mind you, I was sort of celebrating the demise of his music page and profile because I was thinking about my olde Facebook account that got hacked into.  However, I didn’t agree with the reasoning behind it, mainly because I’m an advent supporter of free speech and free speech is for everybody, including the ones you don’t agree with.  I remember before I even made a parody blog with his writings, which I thought if I did put more time into it, I would’ve made it really funny.  However, I decided to delete it because I really didn’t want to waste my time with something that anything to do with the dude.  The only thing nowadays I really look at when it comes to MSB is his views on retro game consoles, video games, and olde arcade games.  The reason for it is because that is one topic, he actually knows quite a bit about, when the other references I have don’t give me a thorough answer.  But that’s all I use him for is just another reference or opinion, on the subject at hand.  I still will not say or support anything he does, largely after he threatened to call the FBI and my unit about me supposedly stalking him.  In fact, MSB even tried to say that to me after I was out of the Army, “Just because you’re out of the Military, doesn’t mean you’re safe,” garbage, like as though I was parked right outside his house.  Even for some crazy notion he finds a cure for AIDS or invents a piece of cutting-edge technology, I still won’t say anything good about the guy.  I won’t say anything bad either, but certainly nothing anything good.  MSB burned that bridge ten times over. 

DJO

This was an even harder blow to me, considering I was friends with DJO for almost twenty years up to when we stopped being friends.  Sadly, after looking back at the situation it seemed inevitable to happen.  It started really back about fourteen years ago when I and a mutual friend of both me and DJO were talking about his habits and his activities.  At the time, DJO was about thirty years olde, and he was still hanging out at the same twenty-four-hour restaurants with the same sixteen to twenty-one-year olde crowds that go there.  I began to think about why DJO was continuing to do something that me and him, along with a few other people we know, were doing when we were in that age group.  It is not that he was dumb, DJO was a very smart guy.  To me, I always felt it was sort of a getaway from almost all the stresses he had in life, kind of like his comfort zone.  However, as the years went by and as I and other mutual friends began to move away from hanging out at those restaurants, DJO would still continue going there.   Then, a year and a half after talking with the mutual friend of ours, I moved out of my dad’s place after I and him got into a heated argument.  With nowhere else to go, I went to DJO’s place to live after telling him what had happened.  While living with him, I tried helping him assist his father, who lived there as well, to try to overcome an issue he had.  His father’s issue was that he was a hoarder, and was very bad with it.  I knew about it since I became friends with DJO, through him telling me and visiting him at his house.  Also, DJO’s father had an issue of hanging out with a bunch of crack whores, which he started doing after he got divorced from his wife.  I agreed to help DJO any way I can while living at his place, and help pay the bills and so forth.  However, looking back at the time I lived with DJO, I and he only grew further apart.  For one, he began to stop trying to change his father, despite the fact his dad found out he had colon cancer and ended up getting surgery for it.  DJO simply had a tendency to just give up when something wasn’t going his way immediately.  As a result, he ended up retreating back to his comfort zones of twenty-four restaurants and playing D&D (Dungeons & Dragons), which he was an advent player of, and even created a game for a group of people with him as the DM(Dungeon Master).  Over the time I lived with DJO, nothing seemed to be going my way at all.  First off, I wasn’t speaking to my parents at all, and I didn’t even want to talk to them after the argument I had with my father.  I was never in good standings with my mother, which again is a whole another story in itself so I’m not going to go into full detail on that.  Secondly, this was around the time when the recession hit, and I ended up getting laid off from my job.  And thirdly, DJO’s excuses for not being able to do anything about his father and just retreating to gaming made my time there miserable.  That was one thing DJO always had a problem with, which was making excuses for why he couldn’t do something.  One thing I did learn while I lived with him was why his brother and sister don’t want much to do with him, because of his self-loathing and overall sense of not doing anything for himself.  Luckily, while I was living with him, I found some friends that helped me guide my decisions on getting out of his place.  Although I already had the idea in my head, my newfound friends told me I should look into joining the Military.  I eventually did go into the Army and got out of DJO’s place after living with him for two years.  After joining the Army, I and DJO really drifted away much further, largely in part he ended up coming out of the closet, which was a huge shock to me considering I knew how he was with the opposite sex in the past.  Plus, I remember DJO telling me before I left for Basic Training, to not act like I was better than everyone else because I was in the Military and they weren't, which is not an issue at all for me, but yet he turns around and ignores people who are not into RPGs(Role Playing Games) or into the card game Magic.  Also, his politics were very liberal, which only gotten even more so in later years to the point DJO started to base his friendships on that subject, and that was how we stopped talking altogether.  He eventually became an Anti-Trumper, along with his new boyfriend, and also the two ended up getting married.  All in all, I still feel very disturbed about that, considering I was his roommate. 

                

             Despite DJO becoming homosexual, and also claiming to be transgender later on as well (he’s really lost his rocker), I’m glad he has found happiness with someone, even though it is a dude.  That ordeal still boggles me to this day, considering how long I’ve known the man.  I know his brother, on the other hand, would’ve claimed that DJO was always gay from the beginning.  I can see him definitely joking about that.  Also, I know his father is no longer with us, so DJO has to live on his own without any help from his parents, which he should anyways be considering he is in his forties now.  Overall, I hope he does maintain his happiness and tries to guide himself on a more positive note.

I am glad to know that I’m in a good place right with my life.  I found a nice home here in Pueblo, CO, where the scenery is beautiful and the people are nice.  Also, I have found some like-minded people here in this town that shares much of the same tastes as I do.  After getting medically retired from the Army, I decided to stay in Colorado over going back to Illinois and I couldn’t be much happier with my decision.  I mean, where else can I easily own a gun and smoke pot legally?  Finally, I would like to again say best of wishes to both MSB and DJO, for a good and fruitful life.  To whatever brings them joy, whether good, bad, odd and so forth, continue to give them growth in a more, positive atmosphere.

On a final note