Greetings from the Casino

Good evening friends, 

I'm sitting here in Black Hawk, Colorado at The Monarch Casino and Resort and have to tell you that Christmas was not a such a bad change this year.  

No Midnight Mass.

No acting as Mom's sous chef in the kitchen.

No over drinking, even. 

For being at a Casino, I haven't actually gambled a whole lot and I have probably been the most sober on a trip I've ever been in a long time.  I may have actually had more of a buzz in Salt Lake City.  Not kidding!

One of the reasons we chose to travel this year for Christmas was because of many reasons:

1. I personally haven't been on vacation at all this year.

2. I haven't really traveled since COVID except once... yep, do the math in your head, kids.

3. We didn't want to do the traditional Christmas thing.

Normally, we look forward to the Latino Catholic Noche Buena thing, but this year we all needed to unplug from everything and everyone.  It seemed like the best way to recharge.  Black Hawk is not very far away from home, but I have to tell you: I can tell I haven't traveled because I keep thinking Black Hawk looks like Switzerland. I have never been to Switzerland so stay with me here.

....Snow, mountains, one road down the middle of the mountain town.  Give me more of this!  

This morning I posted a video on Instagram of the gym at the resort.  You can see a panoramic view of the mountains from the twenty-third floor as you walk on the treadmill or lift weights.  The hot tub is nice too, but by the time I got there today folks already had their kids in the water.  I just don't see the point of bringing children to a Casino-based resort!  What are these fools smoking?!

This past year in the salon has been one of my busiest and for that I am eternally grateful.  I do, however, think I sold myself short on times to rest and taking proper time to recharge and reset; I never traveled, I never went on a day trip, nothing!  The biggest trip I took this yeas was driving to Trader Joe's one city away.  

We need to change that in 2024! 

I am looking forward to the new year, that's all I can say.  

I have a New Year's Rule (my life is full of rules):

The rules is this: Whoever reaches out to you in the month of January is a good friend, this is a good sign for the year to come.  The folks that infiltrate your January will be your buddies or the power players for the next ten to eleven months.  Trust me here.  

I am also very superstitious about New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.  

On New Year's Eve, my family and I have a a steak dinner and drink cava or champagne and talk about our rose and our thorn (the goods and bads) of the year and our plans for the next one.  This tradition shifted to the thirtieth by default when I got with be ex because he was a New Year's Eve baby so naturally, the night belonged to him.  I think I should have kept the tradition alive and shifted HIS birthday because we didn't always have an easy ride in our years together.  Not everything was bad, but when I say "friction", I mean FRICTION with all CAPS.  

Midnight arrives and it's a common Spanish tradition to drink cava and eat twelve grapes as a sign of good luck for the new year.  Each grape symbolizes each month of the year to come.

On New Year's Day, we go to church because it's the Feast of Mary, Mother of God.  No exceptions!  If you can party like a big boy, you can go to church like a big boy!  Also another custom in Spain and other parts of the Mediterranean is to eat lentils the next morning.  In some parts of Italy and even Spain, they may even eat lentils and sausages (peasant food).

Eating a humble meal of lentils reminds us that we ended the year on a high note (cava, steak, butter, the whole schmegegge), but we will enter humbly and eat as peasants.  Since lentils look like coins, the idea is that the more lentils you eat, the richer you'll be that year.  It's also not half-bad on the digestive system to start on the first of the year detox! Start your engines, kids! 

Traditions mean a lot to me.  Last year, my parents made steak on New Year's Day and in the middle of the steaks being grilled, I received a phone call that the pipes to the salon were broken because they had frozen.   See what I said?  Don't start off the year acting high on the hog because that little snafu cost me a lot of money in lost revenue and the heartbreak of me calling guests to reschedule them at the beginning of the year after I've been on Holiday Break for two weeks.  Have you ever told a woman her color was cancelled after she's waited an extra week?  It's not pretty! 

Lentils only on New Year's Day! Anyone that invites me out for a heavy meal on New Year's Day is gonna get blocked online and in real-life, you're not on Team Josh! I will officially declare you Judas and banish you from my island. 

I have a couple of goals for the New Year:

First things first, I'd like to travel again.  I haven't been on a plane since 2018.  

I'd also like to set stricter boundaries with my friends.  Let me elaborate... is it okay to tell my friends that if they aren't positive and they're always bitching about life that I am not their boy?  I just don't care anymore.  If you're depressed, get help.  If you feel unfulfilled in your marriage, seek counseling or separate and scare the shit out of your husband because we all know he can't make it without you and if I am really not the hairdresser for you, please tell me because I can refer you to some young tart that knows nothing about what she's doing except burning hair and charging like she's a twenty-year stylist.  I have no problem stepping away from Karen, Negative Nancy and Lousy Loretta this year.  I give you my blessing friends, lovers, kids and clients to leave me.  Imagine I'm Greta Garbo, she left Hollywood at 36.  Do me the favor. 

What I think I am mostly getting at is that I want to explore more this year.  

I'm in a new decade of my life and I want it to be fulfilling because in ten years, I'll be under the knife transplanting a new face on this one or cutting off one my chins to keep up with all the other people on TikTok.  (Kidding! It's funny.)

Tomorrow we leave for home and I'm honestly very excited to go home and be in silence.  I've stayed kind of quiet online because I don't want to interact all that much with most people.  I am pretending to be Zechariah... you remember him right?  He was John the Baptist's dad.  When the angel told him that Elishevah was pregnant, he went mute til Johnny baby was born.  

Joshua Zechariah signing off...

Happy New Year from Black Hawk, Colorado.  Maybe I'll stay a little longer. 

xo -j.

Enter Stage Right: Josh

Well, oh well.

It's nice to be back.

I've been sitting here trying to figure out how to upload and layout blogs again and frankly, the easy-to-use sites have gotten very sophisticated. 

Most influencers on the internet do not write, they post influencer content where they are either heavily made up or not wearing make up at all.  Both of these scenarios bother me greatly.  We are surrounded by people that are non-experts in expert fields that do not deserve the platform they do so well on with the help of paid sponsorships and thirsty behavior; Very little is left to the imagination if you are internet famous now.

Back when I started blogging, it was 2005.  I was freshly into the beauty industry and was exploring so many aspects of my life that I never thought I'd ever have to question.  Twenty-one year old Josh was freshly into meeting friends for Friday happy hour and often questioning if I liked girls or boys.  I knew the answer, we all knew the answer!  Why was I kidding myself thinking I liked girls?  Also, why did I turn into a binge-drinker a couple years later?  The beauty industry does that to people.  It's a heavy-drinking industry. 

Bisexuality and booze had fully taken over and I was ready to hammer out the details in a blog that became sleeper hit called "Pretty Boy Education". 

The blog became incredibly popular and even got a spin-off, "Pretty World, Fabulous Life: Inside Studio JRy".  Not only was I talking about my young adult adventures, the spin-off followed my life as a single man in a small city establishing my clientele and building my reputation as a quick-witted, sharp-tongued personality that was very much in charge and not giving a shit what anyone had to say about the dance moves I was making.  The spin-off blog won an award as people read about my new contracts with major hair care companies, celebrity gossip, beauty industry gossip and even landed me a newspaper column, "Haute Mess" and another one for young adults called "Living Fabulously".  

More awards and speaking engagements followed.

As I opened my salon, my popularity took a little nose dive as I lead the opening of my salon with my ego and not my heart; I had no idea what I was doing and it was EVERYONE ELSE'S fault.  Oh yes, the accountability I learned to accept working with my Kabbalah teacher had flown right out the window.  I was unstoppable in my own eyes and no one was going to get in my way... not a friend, not family, no one.

A little phone call from the haircare company Joico came along and my Twitter account was on fire!  I had started a a lifestyle blog called "Rockstar Slums" at the request of my romantic interest at the time.   My blog was influencing before influencers were a thing.  I was sent free everything to review: shampoo, make-up, food, candy, books to read, porn to watch (not kidding), underwear, you name it.  

I was popular again and this time in a larger market!  

This popularity got me a gig styling Joan Rivers hair and an up-and-coming model that didn't quite make it to Victoria's Secret, but she did have a commercial air for JCPenney during the Oscars that year.  

You couldn't stop me! I thought to myself, "if the folks in my town don't like me, I can always run away to LaLa Land (LA)."

The next year brought me a relationship that lasted eight years and lots of heartache.  I was drinking a lot more and I was in serious trouble when a viral video of me made it out on the internet of my crap behavior.  I was in serious debt with the IRS and after years of them asking for their money, they levied my salon account and I had to start from zero.  The taste of the Hollywood fall from grace was just another episode in the melodrama that had become the miniseries of my life.  

The people that loved me stood by me, but please know there were others out there that continued to salivate when they saw me stumble.  The toxicity of online bullying had me on my knees.  

The salon was doing well, but it could have done better and I was fighting a lot at home.  

Eventually in the winter of 2017, I made the proclamation that I was going back to my Roman Catholic roots because, "my way [wasn't] working anymore."  

The next year brought great changes for me.  I began writing a blog called "Latter Day Catholic" that talked about my life growing up as the product of a Latter Day Saint father and a Roman Catholic mother and it all came rushing to my mind's eye that I had been running from who I was.  

Why was I trying so hard to be rebellious?  Why was I so full of myself?  Is this what the Kardashian feel like?

It was a bad look and it humbled me to walk into the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart and say, "I'm back, God, tell me what to do."

I developed a deep love for church history and a devotion to our Heavenly Mother (Mary).  I prayed with fervor each day for guidance and eventually registered for Theology School.  

I was being asked if I wanted to be a priest and I told everyone, "No.  I just want to know all there is to know."  

For me, studying and researching is a big part of who I am and when it comes to religion and spirituality, I'm not led by blind faith and most certainly don't pray because someone told me to.  Nope.  I'm gonna make that decision all on my own.

"Latter Day Catholic" was a hit and I began teaching religious education.  I still teach to this day, but my M.O. is different: I don't want you to be Catholic, I want you to develop a relationship with God.  If you become Catholic, cool.  If you hate the church and leave, I know it's not for you and I'm cool with that too.  If you are just doing this to be confirmed and baptize your niece, that's a shitty reason to become Catholic.  That's such a big commitment for such a small job title.  Godmother and Godfather are not what they once were... especially in the age of OnlyFans.

When the pandemic hit, I stopped writing all together.  I was incredibly depressed and my relationship was in deep shit.  We did not agree on anything when it came to politics or COVID.  Seven weeks inside (get the prison reference?) let me see that my path was very different.  I had begun doing yoga again the year before and I was meditating and praying and working with my Kabbalah teacher again.  I registered for yoga school and became a yoga teacher in the middle of the pandemic.  

When we came back from the lockdown, my book was full and for the next 22 months, I had a full cancelation list and a full roster of clients.  I had not seen this big of an influx in my career as a hairdresser since 2010.  I began teaching yoga and people liked me! 2020, 2021 and 2022 all came and went and each year the salon grew more and more and more.  My sales were up 49% in 2020,  They were up 150% in 2021 and in 2022, another 139%.  This year is coming in strong as my post profitable year ever at 19 years in the business.  

There's more to tell you and I want to keep writing, but I think this is good stopping point.  

I've been sitting out of the blogosphere because frankly, the world is nuts now and I know people are going to clap back and try to come for me in the comments and the DMs.  Thats what they do now! 

We do not live in a very supportive society. We live a society that likes to tear people down and for most of 2020 and even up til now, I've hid under a rock making money and meditating like a monk.  I have not traveled at all except for one yoga retreat in 2021.  

I feel like an old Hollywood actor that left the silver screen and now he's taking on Broadway or the West End.  

A new era has presented itself clearly to me and I'm ready.

[Enter Stage Right: Josh]

xo, j.