Live Your Life in a Crap Free Zone

By Ethan Holmes

Let's face it; life is full of choices. They are present in every single category of our existence whether it is what we do for a living, what we own or want to own and who our friends and family are. Everything from media advertising to your upbringing as a child invites you to come over and sit in a warm tub of crap trying to make you feel inadequate, undesirable, needy, unworthy and just not cool. What would your life be like if you started making different choices? What would happen if you stopped accepting invitations to sit in other people's tubs of crap and stopped extending them to others?
Read Live Your Life in a Crap Free Zone by Ethan Holmes to see if it's time for you to make different choices and travel a different path.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ethan Holmes
• Release date: Jul 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476437958

Ethan Holmes

Ethan Holmes is the author of six books including the novels, Earth's Blood, Water and The Keystone. He is also the author of two collections of short stories, A Multi-Pack of Brain Flakes and Shorts and Other Laundry.. Currently residing in Northern Arizona, he enjoys hiking, playing twelve string guitar, reading, writing and participation in most active sports.

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Live Your Life In A Crap Free Zone

Ethan Holmes, Smashwords Edition

© 2013 Revised Edition

Please visit Ethan Holmes’ official website at http://www.ethanholmes.com

This book is sold for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be given away or re-sold in any form to other people. If you would like to encourage your friends to read this book please purchase a copy for them or encourage them to purchase a copy. Thank you for showing respect for the hard work of the Author.

No segment or whole of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. All rights reserved. All rights under the copyright reserved above remain unlimited.

This book is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination and/or are used fictitiously. All references to any and all characters in this book are strictly fictional. Any semblance to any real person is strictly unintended and deemed incidental by the Author. The Author hereby acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. The author does not endorse or otherwise recommend any of the various products/services which may be mentioned in this book. © FrozenMan Productions, Ethan Holmes

Table of Contents

Foreword

Chapter One: Finances and Possessions

Chapter Two: Advertising

Chapter Three: Family

Chapter Four: Friends

Chapter Five: Work

Chapter Six: Religion

Chapter Seven: Sex

Chapter Eight: Personal Health

Chapter Nine: Education

Chapter Ten: Parenting

Chapter Eleven: Fear

Chapter Twelve: Death

Chapter Thirteen: Addiction

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Grateful Acknowledgement to my staff of editors:

Linda Christie, Chief Copy Editor

Sue Connell, Storyline/Copy Editor

R. Watts, Storyline/Copy Editor

Foreword

Let’s face it; it’s not a popular subject. I think I should get two merry-go-round tokens and a free bag of caramel corn just for having the courage to write about it. All of you have a lot of crap in your lives. You do, your friends do, your family does and so does everyone you come in contact with every day. I had a lot of crap in my life too; I just think I have less of it today now that I know what to look for and how to get rid of it. That doesn’t make me better than you by any means; it just means I strive to have less crap in my life. It’s a lifestyle choice.

I can tell you, crap is not an easy thing to dispose of or clean up and you know it. Just think for a moment; if you had a big pile of crap sitting in the middle of your living room or yard right now, how in the world would you get rid of it? Not so easy, is it? And it sticks to everything. Have you ever tried to get rid of it with only a half-hearted intent? Even when you think it’s gone often times it’s not.

There are signs that you have a lot of it in your life. The problem is most people skip right over the signs. For instance, how many times in your life has someone actually told you, You’re full of crap? I know I’ve been told that way too many times to count, and by people I wasn’t even aware knew much about me. Yet now I realize how close to the mark they were, even if they didn’t know it when they said it. My thoughts now are that their meaning and mine would turn out to be much different though. Nevertheless I think that it was an almost psychic revelation that they could say that about me yet not really know what they were saying.

There are other signs of it too. How many times have you told a friend that you can’t go to dinner with them or you can’t get away next weekend because..., all together now, I have so much crap to do I couldn’t possibly. See, there’s a part of you that instinctively knows it’s all crap and yet you are trained to acknowledge that you have to do it. You must, or life as you know it would cease to exist.

Here’s another sign. How many times have you heard someone say, Why do you have to put me through this crap? Feel free to insert the following; your mother, your father, a boyfriend/girlfriend, your best friend, your boss, your wife/husband or their divorce lawyer. You get the picture.

One more and then it’s on with the show. How often have you dreaded going in to work on Monday? I have got so much crap sitting on my desk waiting for me I can’t even think about taking a lunch break. You already know this on Saturday morning and now your entire weekend is completely shot thinking about the unending pile of crap waiting for you when you return to work. The problem is you never left; you never climbed out of that tub.

I never saw myself seriously writing a self-help book. It wasn’t more than just a few years ago that I first realized I needed help outside my own self-perceived years of wisdom, experience, screw ups and poor decisions. It is, after all, not an easy thing to acknowledge or take responsibility for. And one can certainly say truthfully that I have none of the paper academic qualifications normally noted dutifully and proudly on the book jackets. I’m not even certain this is a self-help book. Maybe it’s just me thinking I’m saying something worth saying, writing something that is worth getting on paper. After all, if there is one thing I am well-qualified in, it’s crap. I had so much of it in my life that after all this time I can truthfully state that I actually own two wheel barrows and a bunch of shovels to move it around. Really, I do.

Here’s how much crap I had in my life without giving you too much personal information, much of it, if not all, due to a life full of poor decisions, poor choices. I have never owned a home. I have never been married. I have never had what could be considered a truly successful relationship. I have a grown child who was not conceived in the ‘proper manner’. (Obviously since I have never married.) I have been arrested and falsely accused and I have had multiple run-ins with police in several different states. (No, I’m not a criminal and never have been. I haven’t even had a traffic ticket in decades.) I have been homeless, starving and I almost froze to death spending a winter in my car. I survived malignant cancer that a renowned oncologist gave me three months to suffer through and then die. I have survived a full blown T-bone crash from a large car while riding my bicycle that sent me forty feet down the street bouncing on my skull. I had a family that was so dysfunctional that at least two of them tried to shoot me on separate occasions. I spent three and a half months in prison for something I didn’t do without a trial or legal representation and was released with an apology and eighteen dollars. I once had a dentist pull an abscessed tooth from my head with no anesthetic. I grew up in a violently abusive environment and ran away. I came within one eighth inch of cutting my own leg off with a chainsaw and still have the pants to prove it. I’ve had two vehicles stolen from me, cleaned out of all my possessions, tools and music and driven to Mexico. I’ve watched my life crumble at least three times in recessions, including this most recent one which they claim ended three years ago.

I have a dear friend; she’s known me a long time. I once actually apologized for the inexplicable fact that she accepts me as her friend and consequently I asked her why. She laughed at me and said why not? She tells me I should write an autobiography. I keep telling her it would scare the hell out of women and children and it would likely be a best-seller in the Horror/Fiction section. Titles I have considered for the autobiography include; No Way!, You’ve Got to be Kidding, How Did You Survive That?, and The Top Ten Ways to Trash Your Life. It would be imperative that at least one chapter of the book deals with self-responsibility and the ability to make choices in your life.

I digress. The point is I know crap. I’m an expert in it. No school of higher education could possibly teach anyone what I know about the subject. Personally I don’t think the word expert covers it. And yet, I’m not here to share crap with you. I’m here to point out the tubs of crap in your life. These tubs belong to you and all the people you associate with or interact with. I am also here to point out the single epiphany I had that caused me to decide to write this book; almost everyone you meet in life wants you to sit in and share their hot tub of crap! Yet you have choices.

Chapter One: Finances and Possessions

The same day the human race came up with currency is the same day its reason for existence changed for all time. One day two Neanderthals were standing there in the middle of frozen tundra. Glog was shivering his butt off looking at Zlog holding a nice, smelly bison skin. Of course Glog wanted the smelly bison skin so that the last of his five teeth wouldn’t fall out from chattering. The only problem was that Glog didn’t have anything to trade to Zlog as was the custom at the time. Zlog shrugged, but then he noticed that Glog had eight small, pretty, round ivory discs hanging around his neck on a gut string. Zlog examined them closely and through various rudimentary gestures and grunts made it somewhat clear that he would ‘sell’ the smelly bison skin for the string of small ivory discs. Thus was borne the first actual purchase of something by a human being. Malls were soon to follow.

About a week later Glog, who never seemed to be able to do anything well except make pretty little discs out of ivory, was sitting there working on some gut string and he noticed that Zlog had a nice hunk of meat from that same bison as he was slogging by. Glog was hungry and this meat was nicely aged; just this side of a nice dull green color and with just the right aroma. So he approached Zlog and indicated by pointing at his five teeth and the meat that he was hungry. Zlog shrugged him off because, being the keen-eyed hunter of the group, he immediately noticed that Glog did not have any more of those discs, (or much of anything else.) He turned around and started shuffling off.

Glog, desperate to have a nice steak, hit Zlog over the head with his stick full of gut string to regain Zlog’s attention. He indicated again, through various rudimentary gestures and grunts, that he would make Zlog eight more of those pretty ivory discs, complete with a free gut string, if he would let him have a hunk of the savory green meat. Zlog, being the sharp bargainer that he was, jacked the offer to ten discs, plus three more for interest. He gave Glog seven suns, (a week in modern times,) to come up with them or else. Thus was born the first credit transaction in the history of humans. Late night television offers of two for the price of one were soon to follow. In fact, operators are still standing by to this very day.

Who knew that what Glog and Zlog started way back then would become what it is today; our finances. Welcome to our pursuit of money from the time we are children, the immediate and pervasive lessons that are pounded at us from birth about what we must have, pursue and attain in life as far as material possessions, how to obtain them and, most of all, the single most important thing you must pursue and hang onto in your adult life, GOOD CREDIT!

Without that, you are told and re-told from a very early age, you are nothing. You are a worthless, good for nothing ne’er-do-well. You are, in truth, told that your credit is you and you are your credit. They even say it’s your credit. Do you know what I say? That’s a huge load of hot, steaming crap!

Let’s deal with this all this stuff one at a time, shall we? Because if I deal with it all at once, both you and I will come away so confused and befuddled we’ll think that Glog hit us with the gut stick.

Joe Everyman is a factory man. He’s been working for the same aluminum door factory for the last twenty-eight years. He has done all the right things as taught to him by the distant relatives of Glog and Zlog who, rumor has it, later started Citi Bank and Bank of America. He has a house with two mortgages, a financed late model car, five credit cards, three gas cards, a personal line of credit and a partridge in a pear tree. Well, maybe not that last part.

He has a daughter and a son who are nearing college age and a wife who thinks the local strip mall is the center of known universe. He has a bass boat project that has four grand invested in it and he’s still not finished. Both his kids have cell phones and laptops dutifully paid for by their father and neither of them wants for anything.

To the Everyman family, life is good. They have lived it the American way like they were taught by family, friends, media, advertising and their very own government. Except that life isn’t always good. Sometimes life turns upside down.

One day Joe Everyman comes home with an envelope he’s scared to death to open. His wife Ethel looks at Joe’s face and at the envelope. She doesn’t want to open it either. Billy Everyman, their son, opens the envelope and a black fog settles over the Everyman household. The letter is short and to the point:

The Blank Aluminum Co. regrets to inform all of its employees of the closing of the factory and all facilities in one week. All staff will receive an amount of severance pay equal to two weeks of their regular pay. Good luck to you all.

In an instant the Everyman family’s lifestyle has changed. Their reputation, credit rating, and over-all station in life are headed down the toilet. Yesterday Joe Everyman was a

Reviews for Live Your Life in a Crap Free Zone

[celiaconrad · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I received this Ebook in exchange for an honest review. Ethan Holmes’ book is amusing, witty and somewhat satirical and, although the book has a deliberately light-hearted tone, the content is not lightweight. Ethan in fact tackles key factors in our lives which influence the decisions we make on a daily basis, but in a way that should not only make you laugh but also make you think about the realities of your life, your options and the choices you can make if you want to change elements of your life and move forward. To read this book you need: a sense of humour and a few hours free time. It’s an easy read and if you take it in the spirit in which it is written, it will prove to be a good tonic! Thoroughly recommended.