Well its been four years. A little more than that because this blog is a few days late.

I wasn’t sure if I should blog about it. I’m still not sure, its kinda personal.

You see about 4 years ago my friend Jason Casteneda died. A car accident you see.

He is the reason paintball is for the better part of the new millenium’s first decade, my life. He was a loving father, a good friend, a rowdy person who loved life and who I envied in that he just seemingly got what he wanted. We were friends, pretty good ones at that but I was the friend he went to when he was tired of his usual friends. I was a getaway, and he was for me as well. Our common interest, paintball kept our friendship alive and we had grand desires of starting a paintball team and of starting and owning a paintball field.

There was a time when we walked from his house to an In-n-out that was probably like at least three miles away and on our way we just chewed the fat, shot the breeze, shared dreams. We would look at the empty lots, the barren brown parcels of land scattered with oil pumps and defunct machinery and we would envision the paintball field that would go there. Woodsball, speedball, we’d have it all. We came across this pedestrian bridge in construction at the intersection of Telegraph and Norwalk and we stopped our walk to toss quarters down the bridge to see how far they’d go. when we were done with that we continued out walk to In-n-out yeah, to there but really we were aimless. This is what we did when I wasn’t with my main friends, and he wasn’t with his. Of course we called my mom after we ate to pick us up because, fuck that, we were done walking haha.

At his wake, his family and friends spoke. Anecdotes and what not a few words here and there. I had something in mind but I didn’t say anything, only a few knew that Jason and I were friends. The ones that matter knew and I was fine with that. I was fine with being the friend he needed to re-energize his other friendships.

To this day, I still feel like he is there, a phone call away, until I remind myself of his death, that the only time I can see him are in the few pictures I have, or on the inside of my eyelids; close them and the memory movie starts. It still feels like a shock to my system.

The smallest things can spell your end, a blown out tire in his case, a piece of food, a brain aneurysm. Things that don’t give you the chance to put affairs in order, events where you are there one moment, gone the next. So I see that these are things we can only avoid to a certain extent, we must live our lives to the fullest, carpe diem and all that and I can easily say I’ve failed at this a few times but I understand that it must be a priority.