PURSUING NIGHTMARES

"The Slob" Reaches 1000 reviews on Amazon

Today marks what I consider to be the greatest achievement of my writing career. My book “The Slob” has cracked 1,000 reviews on Amazon. It may not sound like a lot, but when you figure that only about 5% of people who purchase a book rate or review it, it’s massive.

When I was writing “The Slob,” I of course had no idea what it would become. But damn, looking back on it all, this book has done so much for me.

It allowed me to quit a job I hated. A job that I felt hopelessly enslaved to. An occupation that left me so depressed, that I can’t even put it into words without this post getting flagged.

In honor of this, I’m going to share some things about my journey that you’re not aware of. I hope everyone can take a little something from it. Usually, I’m pretty reserved about what I’m willing to share, but this is a very special day, so it’s only fitting.

I have always been writing ever since I was a child, but it was really an on and off kind of thing. There was never any time during my youth where I ever thought, or walked outside and shouted at the clouds, “I think I could legitimately write for a living!”

I wasn’t (and I’m still not, and never will be) college educated. In fact, I barely graduated high school because I was too busy getting laced and being lazy. Only thanks to my English teacher Mr. Deleo, who went out of his way to help me in the final, waning weeks of senior year, was I able to graduate from high school.

Even then, when I somehow miraculously made it, I almost fucked that up too. I’d gotten into an altercation the day before graduation with the principal. He was pissed off at me (a pretty standard affair during those years) and, in turn, revoked my graduation. His actual gripe was silly, but I guess he’d finally had enough of my bullshit. I stood in the main hall of Central Falls High School as he tried to rip the tickets that my family would need to enter the graduation ceremony out of my hand. I’d done a lot to earn those, and I wasn’t about to give it up so easy. I gritted my teeth and jerked the tickets out of his grip. I’d never actually felt like I wanted to punch him before, but emotions were running high, and, in that moment, anything seemed possible.

He screamed at me, “It doesn’t matter if you have the tickets! You’re not walking, and your family’s not coming, Beauregard!”

“Fine, you want you’re fuckin’ tickets?! Keep ‘em!” I yelled back.

I looked at him, balled the tickets up, threw them in his face, and told him to go fuck himself.

Then I walked out the front door, got into a car, and went and got hammered.

Eventually, after I gave a formal apology brokered by another administrative figure that liked me, against all odds, I was able to walk and graduate.

That is just ONE story from high school. The fact that it was such a challenge to make it through would make most people assume there’s no fucking way I could do something like become a full-time author and independent businessman. But I have my teachers to thank for that.

Shoutout to Mr. Deleo, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Valentine, Mr. Tudino, and Burt. There are others too, but I just think these guys really shaped who I became. Particularly a conversation I had with Mr. Thompson about the book American Psycho in the school library. As I get older, I start to realize how important these, at the time, seemingly insignificant moments actually were.

I can hear my scumbag friends saying it now, “Not college educated? I’m shocked.”

Anyhow, the point is, I was just a guy with, on paper, a mediocre at best education. A guy that had been working since he was 15 years old non-stop. The only road after high school that I wanted to take was one of insanity: work just enough to make a living, party every day, and drink and do whatever drugs we had around. I did that for about 5 years, working hard labor in mostly sweltering factories, before eventually landing at a bank to begin an odyssey of answering thousands of phone calls.

Call center life is strange. You can catch hints of the atmosphere in my book “All Smiles Until I Return.” During this period, I found myself floundering for a while. Getting fucked-up and doing reckless shit for about another 6-7 years without fail. I was also doing music with some of my close friends at this time. We played live shows at trashy venues, lived a starving artist lifestyle, and threw the most insane house parties while using our kitchen as a stage. It was the stuff of legend really. At least to us anyway…

That was an incredible chapter in my life that I got to spend with some really ridiculous but equally amazing people (NOTE: I hope to write a book about this part of my life at some point in the future before I forget it all). During all the chaos, I was still writing though. It was mostly violent and perverse song lyrics, and maybe the occasional short story, but I was still writing nonetheless. And it was always the darkest horror imaginable.

It was around this crazy time I got arrested and charged with a felony for having a ridiculous amount of shrooms on me. I love hallucinogens. While they can be terrifying and dangerous (depending on the person ingesting them) they always give you an incredible perspective on life. You come out of the heavy trips changed. You’re humbled and grateful for everything that you took for granted. It makes sense that they are being used in micro-doses to combat depression now. What took so long?

Meanwhile, I wasn’t even selling them, we were just gonna eat them in the woods, but that’s a pretty serious crime apparently. Jail was pretty much what I imagined. When me and my good friend were sharing pisstaind cells beside each other, we heard the cops clowning us in the other room.

“Dude, those guys were gonna take all these fuckin’ shrooms! They’re fucking crazy.” He went on to make some silly impressions of how we might’ve acted. Those guys were funny.

Yes, we were crazy. Yes, we did insane things that were very, very fucking stupid. But, the older I get, I look back on those dumb moments with an ever-growing fondness. As crazy as it sounds, those were some of the best times of my life. Those fucked up experiences made me the person and the writer I am today. I often wonder what my writing career would’ve been like if I could’ve started earlier, but I believe I would have missed out on some extraordinary experiences that would’ve definitely left my soul with far less seasoning. Those life moments are invaluable. They’re fucking priceless. You may just not have realized it yet.

Despite me opening up a bit in this post, I should note, that throughout this journey, I was dealing with many personal family issues that left me in dark depressed places sporadically the entire way. All the way up until even today. I won’t elaborate, but I’ll say that my mother has gone through it about 1000 times worse than me. She is essentially (outside of my wife of course) the only immediate family I have left. She is a huge reason I’m able to do this and more of an inspiration than you can imagine. She has always believed in me. I owe much of my success to her. My mother will always be the person in my life whose strength I will admire. Whenever I’m down, I’ll think about the demons that she’s defeated and continues to defeat. Hopefully better days will arise at some point for us. Hopefully, the real-life horror will finally come to an end.

A recent picture of my mother and I at a terrible convention.

Anyhow, after getting locked up I was forced to enter a rehab and piss-test program. Thankfully, since it was my first felony charge, I was able to work with a diversion program and get it expunged. Because of this, I was also able to keep it hidden from my job at the bank and avoid losing my position.

I didn’t need rehab, but going into the experience I decided to make the most of it. I was open and shared things about my life and also listened to some folks tell really fucked-up stories in group that were just bone-chilling. I didn’t expect to get much out of it, but looking back, I got plenty.

It was a short time after this that I decided to finally apply myself at the bank. I worked with enough focus to get elevated off the phones (which in a call center is an INCREDIBLE feat.) and worked more on the software side of things. I mostly was testing updates and fixes, reporting bugs, etc. I was able to log countless hours of servicing both customers and associates during this time; experience that I rolled over into my approach with my readers. Not that they’ve ever given me a problem, but just having an always positive mentality and being willing to go above and beyond are good traits to ingrain in yourself if you’re interacting with people willing to support your true passions. I also got to travel to different call centers all over the country on the company dime. This travel-heavy period is another point in time that I got to glean a lot of great writing experience.

This is also the time that I consider to be the dawn of my professional writing career. It was like a switch just flipped in me and I began cranking out story after story. I also met my amazing wife around this time, who took it upon herself to look into some publishing options for me. By then I had already written Die Tommy, but still had no idea what, if anything, I was gonna do with it.

Eventually, I started experimenting with self-publishing, but the bank was still the only place I saw a potential career. Writing still didn’t seem realistic or even slightly plausible to be honest. Also, at work, I’d done so good at my tech job that I was able to apply for other jobs. This is where things took a turn to deep depression.

The application support role that I landed was like a dream come true… or so I thought.

I had some small team management duties, and worked on incredibly complex software, that unlike the call center, I wasn’t previously a user of. This became an incredible challenge for me. I never did really get a grip on what the fuck I was actually doing. But it was a $75,000 salary. Pretty good for the guy that barely graduated high school, was a felon, and a piece of shit everyday party boy.

What I didn’t realize in getting a job of the band level, is that, I had to give a little piece of my soul away for the money that came along with it. The stressful days felt endless. I was having to endure dealing with issues so complex that I didn’t even have a spare moment to think of what story I wanted to write next. On top of other personal issues, my mental health was fucked. The job was consuming me; suffocating my imagination and creativity.

Then I said fuck it. I decided to do more late nights, where I learned the ins and outs of self-publishing, and also got a sizable amount of my writing done. Despite being in such a gloomy mind state where I literally pondering packing it in, I found a way to push forward. I took my depression, personal issues, stress, real-life horrors, and anger, and I wrote “The Slob.”

I just continued to churn through the shit, and write books, make mistakes and learn. After releasing six books that pretty much no one aside from family and friends read, I took everything I learned and decided to make some changes and repackage my first four releases. I didn’t give a shit that no one was reading, I just wanted to release stuff I thought was cool. If other people liked it, that would be amazing, but that didn’t so much matter. I’d found a way to express myself. An outlet where I didn’t have to depend on anyone.

This is often the problem with people who romanticize the idea of being a writer. You’re already a writer; from the moment you learned the English language you became one. But if you truly want to do it, you just have to do it.

No one is going to write it for you.

No one is going to make the sacrifices for you.

No one is going to make all of your problems disappear so you can focus and have a fair shake at it.

You have to just do it yourself. In the center of the street, while all your dirty laundry is being aired, while the cars are screeching by nearly splattering you at a hundred miles per hour, while the people around you are screaming at the top of their lungs, while your mind is crumbling and you’re questioning your worth and sanity, while the chaos that is your entire fucking life tries to chew you up into a pile of bloody pulp and spit you out, you have to find a way.

No one said it was going to be easy, but if you want it, it’s laying there spread eagle for you.

So, eventually, I rereleased my first four books. Then suddenly, out of absolutely nowhere, “The Slob” blew up. I wasn’t making nearly what I was with my job at the bank, but one day, I woke up hating my fucking life still and it struck me, “Holy shit, I just made twelve grand this month.”

I still haven’t had a month that good again, yet.

YET.

Back in the “real world” I felt sick at the start of each day. I knew what I wanted to do; my passion was there somehow blossoming in front of me. Still, I was dealing with the relentless pressure of my job and feeling like a failure every day that had no clue what he was doing. I consider this the worst professional period of my life. Even when I was broke as fuck working on a factory line making tomato sauce my moral was higher.

At least I was happy.

At least I had my thoughts.

I was also drained, stressed and severely overworked (this was during the ‘work from home’ era of the debacle that ensued in 2020 where everyone just kept working and never stopped). I was able to keep doing that job for about 3 years until I was about ready to snap. And I don’t mean that in jest. I’d reached a critical juncture in my life where I knew something drastic had to happen.

But could I really quit my job? Could I really live my dream? When you work somewhere for 12 years, have invested your entire future into it, and don’t have a fluffy education to fall back on if the whole thing flops, the notion is absolutely terrifying. There was no telling if I would ever get another opportunity of that caliber.

But the more I thought about it, I had to ask myself, what was I really afraid to lose? The misery that clung to me like stink on shit? The suicidal thoughts?

It was the money of course.

Thankfully, I was making enough at the time to try and learn how to tread water. I decided that I’d rather drown than continue on suffering a death by a thousand papercuts anyhow. With the support of my wife who has always believed in me and saw I was in a bad way, I gave my two weeks. I couldn’t have done it without her letting me know that she had my back. I love her and pretty much owe this whole writing success thing all to her. Anyone who is a huge fan of my work, thank her, because it probably doesn’t happen if she’s not in the picture.

A picture of my wife and I at Christmas after she gave me this sweet Rambo headband and fish mask.

While I was apprehensive, I knew that if I didn’t do it, I’d always regret it until the day I was laying on my deathbed ready to go tits up. There aren’t many things that I’d have ever regretted for my entire life, but not taking this leap of faith would have definitely been one of them. But I did it. I took the frightening plunge and never looked back.

Flash forward and I’ve opened an online store and built a customer friendly small business for my readers. I’m doing conventions and making people smile. These same people are also making me smile. I’ve released 17 books and counting. I’ve been nominated for multiple awards that I never could’ve imagined, and who knows, I may even win one! I’ve met and worked with incredible authors that I used to admire from afar. I have multiple potential films in the works.

It’s fucking crazy.

I wouldn’t have that without all the readers. Each of you has gone out of your way to buy, share, discuss, and promote me. This whole wild ride has been organic. I’m forever indebted to my readers, as long as you enjoy the content, I promise to keep putting it out. And boy, do I have some fucking doozies coming down the line for you!

Lastly, and this goes back to the beginning, I hope whoever’s reading this can experience something similar to what I have. It can take a long time to figure out what truly makes you happy, but it’s real. This doesn’t even necessarily pertain to writing, but, if you get the opportunity, take a chance on yourself. Do something that scares you or that might be risky.

Now I’m not saying quit your job tomorrow. I had to work really hard, for years, to set myself up for success. But as I sit here next to my dog “Clive Barker” in my living room writing this piece, all that work and those sleepless nights were worth it. And even if this whole thing comes crashing down tomorrow, it was all worth it.

A picture of my blind dog “Clive Barker” being a good boy as usual.

Pursue your dreams, or in my case, my nightmares. Bet on yourself. Make your own story. Live your best life. All you need is one person to believe in you.

I believe in you.

Aron Beauregard

Living Room

With the Wrench…

5/19/2022

11:21 AM

If you’d like to celebrate “The Slob” thousand review mark by grabbing a signed copy or haven’t visited my store yet, you can do so by CLICKING HERE or on the image below. As always, your support is never taken for granted and always appreciated. I couldn’t have written this article without each and every one of you.

Thanks again, you rule.