The first 29 years of my life were a product of difficult beginnings and efforts to be free within those difficulties. Around that age I began to have questions about why the world was the way it was and why I was as I was. The objective pursuit of answers to those questions reshaped my perception of reality. Most notably in the recognition that what exists, exists not by mistake or due to incompetence, but to maintain and advance advantaged interests in this country.
Being naive, I thought I could talk to people who claimed to be concerned with addressing issues that affect people’s quality of life and they would be interested in the solutions. That is me, swift to correct himself and take correction in the satisfaction of knowing that his truth is stronger and more complete. That is not others who profess concern with causes for the financial and social benefits that typically accompany the claim to a cause, who must ignore information and criticism that challenges their beliefs.
For reasons much too complex to address in this summary I left Milwaukee, WI and went to Los Angeles. I rented a room in Panorama City, worked craigslist jobs as well as a telemarketing job in Reseda. I attended different political activist groups as well as political conversational groups. This went on for months but it felt like years. Failing to gain the interest of the groups I attended and finding myself in a situation of utter depravity, eating peanut butter sandwiches and sometimes not having money for the bus having to walk to work. I gave the woman I rented a room from notice that I was moving out. Having seen people displaying signs to get money I decided I would sleep on the streets, hold a sign to get money, and have the time to study and work on my material.
This lasted a few months and I traveled up the west coast having no attachment to the area. Eventually I returned to Wisconsin. There was a vehicle that was going to be junked because the wheel hub assembly needed to be replaced. I replaced the wheel hub and was given possession of the vehicle.
While on the west coast I discovered there was a thriving long distance ride share market. I returned to the west coast and made money transporting primarily “trimmigrants”. Trimmigrants are people who migrate to northern California to work as trimmers during the harvest season. They usually arrive in the SF Bay Area and need rides to locations in Humboldt County, while others need rides from Humboldt County back to the bay area. I went as far north as Arcata along the 101. I would try to schedule 3 to 4 passengers at $50 to $75 per person but it didn’t always work out that way, and as you can probably imagine it was very time consuming.
My van broke down in San Francisco. I applied for the meager benefits they had, participated in a smoking study that provided me with free cigarettes and some monetary compensation. I lived in the van and began working on material again. Eventually the van was towed and I stayed in a shelter for a few months. Once I completed what I consider today to be a short sighted effort at a book containing 3 proposals geared towards addressing two symptomatic and one systemic issues concerning opportunity and representation, I found a job working for a moving company. I purchased a car and returned to Milwaukee.
In Milwaukee I worked for a company called Wisconsin Foundation Specialists. I received an invitation to go to Colorado Springs to visit and possibly work for someone I knew growing up and accepted the invitation. Over the years I was impressed with his work ethic and skill which translated into success. Unfortunately when I arrived he was not the same person who I used to see from time to time that was doing well for himself. He found himself in some legal trouble, separated from his wife, was secretly using meth, and was keeping company with people who were involved in that substance dependence lifestyle. I stayed with him for a few weeks but it was not a good environment. I went to Denver, lived out of my car, and worked jobs through craigslist gigs and day labor services.
I received a call from another person I knew from Milwaukee who asked me if I wanted to work with him in Florida. His dad was awarded damages for injuries sustained in a car accident and purchased some properties that he was going to pay us to repair and renovate. This was more appealing than what I was presently doing so I told him I’d like to come help.
I was looking on craigslist for passengers who wanted to go to Florida for company and to cover the cost of the trip. There was a woman who wanted a puppy transported and was paying $250 but I would have to leave about 2 weeks before I was supposed to arrive for work. I figured I could find work in Florida as well as I could find work in Denver, so I left early to make the $250 to transport the puppy.
In Florida as fate would have it the engine blew on the car. It was still modestly drivable, I didn’t completely lose compression but it wouldn’t rev higher than 2000 rpms and was on the precipice of not running. I called the person who had work and he told me he was going to be postponed because he injured himself falling down a hill at a wedding event.
I knew in Denver I could earn money through the day labor service. I junked my car, I think I received $200 for it, and bought a GreyHound ticket back to Denver. After arriving in Denver I may have had $150 maybe less. I left Denver with only about $300 and had unexpected expenses along the way which included a flat tire. I worked at the Iron Man day labor service everyday there was work available. Sometimes I slept outside and other times I rented a bed from different people on Craigslist for $15 to $20 a night. After what I remember to be a few weeks I found an ad on Craigslist to rent a camping trailer at a lot for $150 per week. I rented the trailer, purchased a car, and had to leave the trailer in a dispute over propane costs which wasn’t initially in our agreement. It came at a very inopportune time where I didn’t have the money to pay for the propone. I had an opportunity to purchase a reliable car, or not purchase the car and continue living in the trailer. One is the facilitator of comfort and the other is a facilitator of income so I went with the latter.
I was working craigslist jobs and jobs through a labor broker. He did the same thing as the day labor places contracting with companies to provide labor but he supplied higher quality workers and paid significantly higher rates. Still, I estimated at that time that it would require about 4 months living out of my car with my current expenses to save $6000 to position myself to begin promoting my material and trying to advance ideas that would cause this world to be more tolerable. The work was very slow paced and I was approaching the end of my ability to perform it.
At lunch I was looking on the craigslist gig section. There was an ad to drive a box truck for a foreman for a daily rate that was slightly higher than I was making as well as the prospect of tips and hotel accomodations. I called and was given the job. Shortly after my first trip I was made a foreman, and not long after that I was engaged in a 50/50 partnership with the owner. Near the time that I finished I had about $8,000 saved. Unfortunately, I had a three week period where I had to wait to complete two deliveries where I incurred significant expenses. There was a period after that where there was the prospect of doing another trip that led to my departure with the company for a variety of reasons.
Eventually I got myself together and decided I would go to Florida to begin my promotional campaign. Florida was a good place to me because it was warm in December, had a diverse population politically speaking, and a high concentration of people. It was also a place I hadn’t been before. I drove straight to Florida from Blue Springs, MO outside of Kansas City. I intended to go to the Tampa area or Fort Myers having been to Fort Myers when I was younger. I stopped in Gainesville and rented a hotel for I think two days to recover from the drive and determine where I was going to go and stay.
When I left the hotel I was pulled over by a Florida State Trooper for not wearing my seat belt. The officer saw my plates were from Colorado and called the K-9 Unit. They performed an open air sniff and the dog alerted on the vehicle. They found 3 grams of marijuana, a pipe with marijuana residue, and 4 10 mg gummy edibles the equivalent potency to about 1.5 grams of marijuana. I was taken into custody, my car was impounded, and I was charged with 4 misdemeanors and 2 felonies. For what I possessed in most states where marijuana is still illegal I could have expected a ticket. I was shocked by the ambition of this officer in the charges he filed, especially given my level of cooperation in believing that the possession of these substances wasn’t a serious offense.
It required most of my money to pay the bond to get out and to get my car out of impound. I began working craigslist jobs. I found steady work through a guy who contracted with Amazon to do in home product assembly. It began well but soon jobs were fewer and farther apart making it not as lucrative as it began. I was arrested on December 4th bonded out on the 6th, and I lasted until February and I was forced to return to Milwaukee to fight my cases. There was a great deal of misconduct by the public defender. I learned the Florida Rules of Professional Conduct and used his misconduct to leverage a favorable resolution by the state. The felonies were dropped, and two of the misdemeanors were dropped for me to plead guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana and possession of paraphernalia for 15 days in jail. My first plea offer prior to creating a dossier on the misconduct of the attorney was for 90 days conditional jail time and 3 years probation.
I spent almost a year resolving these cases. After which I was stuck in Milwaukee (West Allis) with very limited opportunities for income and advancement. My car was messed up to the point where I had to junk it. Trapped, I did the only thing I could, which was untrap myself. The plan was to fly to San Diego, apply for whatever benefits were offered, get a shelter bed, find work, buy a car, and begin promotion. San Diego was chosen 1st because it was warm which is appealing if you’re going to be homeless during the winter. The second reason was I presumed like San Francisco, if you’re homeless they’ll be quick to get you into a shelter. I applied for benefits and received food share, but it was extremely difficult to get into a shelter bed. After spending a week sleeping on the trains I sought opportunity elsewhere.
I found an ad for a cheap room for rent on Las Vegas craigslist. I flew to Vegas and rented the room. In Vegas gig work was difficult to come by but I found enough to sustain me for the first few weeks and eventually steady work for a 6 week period. One again I saved enough money for a car.
I bought the car from an auction and it had problems. The first problem was the water pump. The water pump on the 2012 Chevy Malibu is more difficult to change than on most cars because the water pump is on the balancing chain not the serpentine belt. After changing the water pump I discovered I had another problem. The car still ran very rough and I didn’t know the cause.
I had to leave Vegas because I couldn’t sustain myself through gig work there. I left with my car running very poorly to Phoenix because I saw they had a lot of gig work there. I stopped at a cheap hotel in flagstaff. While at that hotel I was looking in the gigs section of other places. I saw an ad seeking participants for a documentary on voices not represented in the mainstream. The gig was in Austin and I contacted the producers who were interested in interviewing me. I decided to skip Phoenix and went to Austin.
I did the interview and was told I would have access to the raw footage that I could use for my own purposes and that the documentary would be released May of 2021. I contacted the producer several times and was given excuses as to why he was unable to get me the footage, and on the last occasion I contacted him after May he didn’t respond at all. I’m not too disappointed because although there were portions where I was able to articulate key points I consider my overall performance to be pretty poor.
While in Austin prior to the interview I got the check engine codes that confirmed that my timing chain was loose and probably jumped a link. I had less than $400 and was living in a car that could die at any time. I was trying to condense my material to get out every key point I had and I answered some questions poorly in an effort to appear more proper and professional than I actually am. In hindsight, I’m not too disappointed that the documentary was probably never released and that I didn’t receive the footage.
The producer stated he was a Marxist which is good or bad for me in respect to how he may try to portray me having both good and bad footage. There are two kinds of socialists, there are people who are socialists because they believe socialism provides people the best quality of life opportunities. I don’t have a problem with these socialists because they will support proposals that are not socialist if they believe these proposals will lead to improvements in people’s quality of life. Then there are socialists who are for socialism based on an allegience to the system. One group would see me as a capitalist who has practical quality of life improving solutions and should support me. The others would hate me for no other reason than I’m not a socialist.
Adding to my stress in Austin was the inability to find work. Eventually I found work in Dallas with an FF&E company. FF&E stands for furniture, fixtures, and equipment and we installed these items in new hotel constructions. I traveled with the company for approximately 7 months, with some small gaps in between jobs. The work was alright, the people were cool, and it provided the means to change my timing chain and a bunch of other issues with my car. The goal was to save between 10 and 15 thousand dollars and begin promoting my material.
I was unable to reach this goal having to leave the company because of a situation I won’t go into now. I had about half the lower end of my goal saved when I departed. I’ve been in a situation where circumstances have caused me to eat deeply into the money that I saved but I’ve arrived at a place where I think I should be happy over the next month or so.
The last 7 years of my life have been difficult to say the least. It has been a recurring cycle of trying to position myself to earn money through the promotion of material and ideas that advance human interests, but experiencing setback after setback that maintains my isolation. Now, with no housing option being appealing since I have poor credit and no verifable income and not wanting to spend $1300 a month on a hotel, I’m just going to begin a national promotion campaign.
I purchased 10,000 flyers I intend to distribute face to face in different locations. I intend to move from location to location and use the flyers as a means to interact with the public and hopefully draw attention to my material. It’s crazy that in 7 years, no one has read or understood what I have written. Prior to compiling material into the publications featured on my website, all of this material was on my website for free. As well as other material that hasn’t been compiled into a project. When people don’t like what you’re saying because it invalidates their perception, they have the option to ignore you.
As for my first 31 years, before leaving for LA 2014, my life wasn’t great then either although circumstantially it was better. I served over 6 years incarcerated off and on in between the ages of 14 to 24, primarily for battery charges. I sold primarily marijuana and prescription pain medication to support myself and family which was the best opportunity available to me to have money and time in Milwaukee. I don’t attempt to hide these things and will talk about and explain the incidence and lifestyle whether right or wrong.
In the last 7 years I had two good income opportunities. Had I been serious about these jobs I could have had a career in either one of them, in interstate moving, or in FF&E. Human happiness is built on one of two foundations. The first is a job where a person’s income affords them the means, including sufficient time not working to do what they want to do when they’re not working. The second is for a person to make enough money to provide for their natural needs while doing what they want to do. Unfortunately for me, there aren’t enough sources of entertainment for me to be content working a job and entertaining myself in my free time. What I want to be doing is creating progress towards a world that is tolerable and that is my number 2.
When I initially began on this path I was motivated by profound feelings of compassion and empathy that caused me to want to improve the lives of others in realizing a freer and more just world, and a more intelligent species. In my development and a better understanding of functions, in understanding how people’s propensity for self deception produces the world we exist in, my general motivation for maintaining this course is no longer empathy and compassion. In acts, I can still be motivated by these things, it feels good to be helpful. But in ambition, it is more a product of creating progress towards a more tolerable world, and a commitment to right, in liberty and truth.
I can’t be bought off of this path because there is nothing to buy that feels better than the promotion of liberty and truth in the interest of advancing human interests. Imagine the world as a dark warehouse where everyone has a flashlight. People point their flash light in a direction and that is what they see. They don’t want to move that flashlight in other directions because they know what is in that beam and have taken a liking to what they see within that beam. Now imagine you were in the warehouse while others were asleep and the lights came on and you saw what was in that warehouse including the workings of it. How could you go back to choosing a single point to shine your flashlight and be content? How could you be content with the people in the warehouse when what they believed the warehouse is is false?