Elizabeth Gilbert's epic TED Talk on creativity and genius

I've read Elizabeth's book, Eat, Pray, Love (not a paid link), and it was incredible.  Definitely her journey, both around the world in a physical sense, but even more so, as a human in the personal, the intellectual, the spiritual, and the emotional sense, was a period of her life struggled through, and captured brilliantly in her book.  As she said in the TED Talk, it would be a tough act to follow for any creative person. 

Yet, she tapped into what ever she tapped into while writing her book, her daemon, her genius, again, and wrote and gave this epic TED Talk.  I have lost count of how many times I've watched this, including just now, before writing these two or three paragraphs, to encourage you to watch it. 

I've spent the 47 years I remember, of my 53 on Earth (this time around), struggling with, and learning to work with, my own creative process.  My process, at times is something like the poet she speaks of.  When I wrote poems a lot, I thought over my basic ideas, and soon learned to go on with other things, and forget all about the poem.  Poems, in particular, come when they want to, or perhaps more accurately, when they are needed.  I, too, often felt a poem was coming shortly ahead of time.  My metaphor was much less pleasant, though.  Poems gurgled around inside me for a bit, and then, much like diarrhea, suddenly surged with the need to escape. 

If I didn't sit down and write them right then, I lost them.  If I put a poem off for ten minutes, it would come out much different than if I wrote it when the urge first came.  If I didn't write a poem down, the spark of the poem went on to wherever poems go, and left me behind.  I've not written quite a few poems.  But I've also captured hundreds, somewhere around 400 to 500, between 1987 and 2008.  And I lost almost all of them, moving to North Carolina, in 2008.  That's a story for another day. 

Since 1998, I've been carrying a simple, black, Bic, medium, ball point pen in my pocket, just to catch poems and other creative ideas.  I feel incomplete without that pen.  I usually have a folded up piece of paper as well, which I make my "Stufftado" list on every morning, as well.  I'll unfold that to write on, or find any other piece of paper around.  If there's no paper, I'll write on my hand.

Since losing all my poems, I've only written about 4 or 5 poems in 11 years.  But I get other ideas.  Just last night, sleeping at a large bus stop, as the homeless man I currently am, I woke up with an idea about a drawing I had in mind.  I sleep in my clothes, on a piece of cardboard, on top of concrete.  My pen is in my pocket all night.  I know my process well enough now, that I pulled my pen out of my pocket, unfolded that piece of paper, and wrote a few words that will likely be on my finished drawing.  I don't remember what those words are.  The spark comes, I write it down, and then I go back to sleep, in instances like that.  In the morning, I often forget the incident even happened, until I think about something related, and it jogs my memory.  That was the case today.  I forgot about writing that idea down, those few words, until I was halfway through this blog post.  That's a part of my creative process. We all have one, and it's a continual mystery, and we each must work to learn, adapt to, and work with , our own personal creative process, if we want to create anything. 

This is my wordy way of saying, "Watch this amazing talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, let it soak in, and watch it whenever it calls to you."  Keep working to learn, and work with, your own creative process.  There's a higher reason we are drawn to do certain projects, creative work, and to do it at certain times.  Follow your own sparks, and then do the work involved. 

Julia Cameron- author of The Artist's Way- Speaking on Creativity and Spirituality

More than 25 years ago, working artist, writer, and playwright, Julia Cameron, put what she knew about sparking your creative process into a workshop, and then a book, called The Artist's Way.  I am one of the multitude who has made tremendous progress in my own creative work with the help of that book.  No one I've come across has the in depth understanding of the creative process, how it works, how to spark and jump start it, and how to live in this world as a functional, working, artist, like Julia Cameron.  I cannot recommend The Artist's Way enough.  But for now, watch or listen to this speech, if it sounds even remotely interesting to you.  You can pick up The Artist's Way, and check out Julia's other books, here. (not a paid link)

Dianna David TED Talk- Have the Balls to Floow Your Dream

When you look for the top rated, most popular TED Talks, this is not usually one that comes up.  But I really love this one, both for the message, but also the amazing presentation Dianna David gives to it.  Maybe this is partly because I actually have worked for a circus, Cirque du Soleil,  in fact.  I was not a performer, but simply a ticket seller in the box office.  I also helped set-up and tear down the Cirque traveling show several times, and got to work in the incredible world of circus people.  I've said many times, if I was told back then that I had to pick one company to work for my whole life, it would have been Cirque du Soleil.  It was one of the most fulfilling places I ever worked, on those early tours, other than working for myself.  

If you watch this TED Talk, you'll get sense of why that is.  Dianna also moved in the circus world to find her calling in life.  Another great TED Talk having to do with creativity, following your dreams, dance, and I think you should check it out.

Amanda Palmer- "The Art of Asking TED Talk"

I "discovered" Amanda Palmer back in late 2012, I think, when I saw her in CSPAN and she was asked to play her song "Ukulele Anthem."  I loved that weird song at that point, a dark time in my own life, and while I never became a huge fan of her music, I found her way or working in the world as a creative person fascinating.  At some point, I ran across this TED Talk, and it's become one of my favorites.  She later wrote a book called The Art of Asking, and she had a great "Authors at Google" talk about the book, which is a much longer and more in depth dive into these same ideas.  Great stuff. 

Moby interviews Shepard Fairey (the Obey Giant guy for those who don't know)

As I've been doing my Dave Voelker drawing, selling a few, and shipping them out this week, I've been on a Shepard Fairey interview kick.  I've watched 4 or 5 interviews, and found this one that I'd never seen before. 

I saw my first "Andre' the Giant has a posse" sticker in about 1994 (95?) in Huntington Beach, I remember the exact spot.  When I first saw the "Obey Giant" stickers, it really fucked with my head, which was his whole point.  It made me wonder if he had sold out, if the CIA had kidnapped him or something to force him to work for them, or what the hell was going on.  I became a fan of his work.  I became a huge fan of street art while homeless in 2007-2008, though I'd been slapping stickers on my own as a BMX/skate company guy, since 1986 or so.  I also developed a wide range of "non-destructive" street art applications of my own during that year.

Anyhow, I was never a Moby fan, I've never seen him actually speak before this, and the music just wasn't my thing.  But this interview is great.  I dig Moby now.  They talk about Shephard's first punk song he remembers, which was in the skate video Skatevisions, which my one time boss, Don Hoffman produced.  Hearing that really stoked me out.  Agent Orange is the whole soundtrack, and I used to play that video when I worked at Unreel (Vision Skateboards' video company) just to listen to the band.  They talk about Shepard's ideas about art itself, art in public places, street art going mainstream, street artists in galleries, and Moby tells his story of how the Republicans stopped the Pope from appearing at a climate change rally in D.C., and a bunch more.

This is a great look into the minds of two really prolific and talented creative guys, and there's a lot of talk about punk rock, as well.  If any of that piques your interest, check this interview out. 

Why do you do what you do?

Yesterday, in the rant inspired post, I mentioned a guy named Simon Sinek.  Here he is a few years ago with a TED Talk explaining his "Golden Circle" concept.  If you figure out why you are doing what you do, then alot of other things become clear.  That's how you lead something new... like a small business or other cause.  How did Simon come up with this concept?  It's in the short, five minute, video below.  Simon Sinek will change the way you look at things.  That's why he does what he does.

Do not do what you hate

This clip looks like a lot later than 1936, but these are examples of those "high paying factory jobs" that were either displaced by new technology, or outsourced to countries with cheaper labor.  That started in the 1970's, dramatically increased in the 80's and 90's, and continues today.  By and large, these jobs were physical, menial, repetitive, boring, and largely sucked.  But they paid well, at least after the unions got going after World War II.  Most of the people I grew up around worked this type of factory job, and nearly everyone hated the jobs they spent 40 or 50 hours a week at.  The Generation X kids of my era, and those before us, were taught that doing a job you hated all day, every day, for your whole working life, was simply the way life was, and there was nothing you could do about it. 

"Don't do what you hate."

-Jesus of Nazareth

This morning, I was walking towards the restroom of a large bus stop that I pass through every morning.  One of the bus drivers was walking up from behind me, heading to the private, driver's restrooms.  As he walked by, a homeless woman asked him what bus to take to a certain street.  Without slowing down, the driver told her the bus number as he walked by her.  She said she thought it was another bus.  For no apparent reason, the bus driver went into a tirade as he continued to walk towards the restroom.

"No lady, I'm giving you bad information, I give you damn people (homeless looking people, apparently) free rides, I put up with your shit all day, and I give out bad information..."  He just kept shouting on and on.  At that point, he was walking past me, at a much faster pace.  It was a bout 6:00 am, and the buses don't run all night, so he was near the beginning of his shift, he hadn't been on the job that long today.  I hadn't had any caffeine yet this morning, and I'm homeless and sleep on concrete every night, at the moment, and I was in a much better mood than this guy.  I said, "Damn!" as he passed by, not sure why a simple question about a bus route sparked such anger so early in the morning.  He kept shouting as he walked ahead of me, no far past the woman who asked the question. 

"Who peed in your Cheerios?" I asked rhetorically, and in my typical sarcastic fashion, not really thinking he heard me.  He did hear me.  Then he started yelling at me.  I can't even remember everything he said, something about him working a "real" job all week, and then, now 50 feet ahead of me, he yelled, "Get a job!"  "I have a job," I said instinctively.  The bus driver kept shouting, and I could hear him still screaming from the driver's bathroom as I took a leak in the public restroom.

Yes, we all have bad days, we all get frustrated by things that happen in our lives, and at work, and we sometimes snap at people when we shouldn't.  But this tirade by the bus driver this morning was so ridiculously out of proportion to the initial incident, that it was funny, not just pathetic.  Bus drivers make decent money.  I just looked it up, right now you can get a $1,500 signing bonus and start at $15.60 an hour, plus benefits.  There's a $2,500 signing bonus if you have a year of experience and already have your CDL.  But obviously, that guy was not a happy camper.  I saw him a few minutes later by the lunch truck at the bus stop, and he had calmed down.

About that time, the bus I intended to take rolled up, but didn't pull all the way up in the loading zone.  The driver got out, hit the restroom, and got back in his bus.  By the way he was parked, I wasn't sure if he was going out of service, or if he was the next bus leaving.  Since I don't have a traditional job, I wake up at different times, and catch the next bus whenever I come through, which can range over about an hour and a half's time each morning.  The bus I was watching pulled away from the big bus stop as soon as he got it running, with nobody on it.  Then, away from the loading area, he turned on the front sign, showing that he actually was in service.  He just didn't want to bother with any passengers at that stop, which has a bunch of homeless people camped out, and sometimes taking morning buses.  I've seen that same driver pull away as I walked up to his bus, waving for him to wait 20 seconds, so I could catch it.

These two guys, who both, obviously, hate their jobs, first thing in the morning, got me thinking about a couple of things.  The first thing was it reminded me of the quote from none other than Jesus of Nazareth himself, "Don't do what you hate."  Yes, Jesus actually said that, yet you will probably never hear that quote in any church.  I'll get more into this later in this post.  To those two angry bus drivers, if you hate your job, 1), admit it to yourself, and then 2), work towards finding a better job or way to make money that you don't hate. 

The second thing that came to mind was the question, "What exactly is my job?"  I don't have a traditional job, and I 'm currently homeless.  There has been an incredible ramping up of hatred and prejudice against homeless people in the last 10 to 20 years, and I'm commonly treated as a subhuman by people on a day to day basis.  One of the many misconceptions about homelessness is that because someone doesn't a apartment or house to live in at the moment, that they have no skills, and no knowledge of anything.  That's simply not true.  These days, there are a lot of talented and once hard working people who are homeless, many are there due to medical issues. 

All that stuff aside, I write blog posts nearly every day, some sharing Old School BMX stories, but many others about where our society is heading, thoughts on how to address the issues in today's world, and thoughts on economic matters, because money affects everyone's life.  I've spent my life watching the financial markets, and reading a few hundred books, mostly non-fiction, that most people don't want to read.  I've also listened to hundreds and hundreds of audio books, speeches, workshops, TED Talks, and other talks on lots of smart subjects.  I spend a lot of time thinking about the future, and what problems we are going to run into, and have to deal with, in the future we're all headed towards.  Few people seem interested in this stuff, but I keep writing, and keep trying to find the aspects of these issues that people can connect with and use to make their lives better.

In my self-directed studies, I've come across the work of Simon Sinek ("The Origin of the Why") in the last year or so, and his concept of figuring out the "Why?" of what's most important to us, and working our life or business out from that fundamental understanding.  He can put his "Why?" into a simple sentence, and I've been trying for the last couple of months to put my own "Why?" into one concise statement.  I spent this past weekend thinking and trying to figure out exactly where to go from this point.  I'm in a new situation, I've found some basic stability, the first step in working out of homeless.  I need to make money on a day by day basis to survive.  But I need to work in a larger context, building my current skills and talents into a viable small business and an actual living.

Somehow, sparked by the bus driver's tirade this morning, my own "Why?" suddenly became clear.  My personal, interest driven studies have combined three big social theories into a kind of overall worldview, and in this worldview, all the crazy shit happening these days make sense.  Our whole society is in a really long transition period, that I call The Big Transition.  To put it as simply as possible, every single part of our society is going to be reinvented or re-imagined.  We're moving from the old, Industrial Age way of thinking and working, into the new, Information Age way of thinking and working.  But we're not there yet.  Everything is in transition.  That's why things are so chaotic.  It's sort of like Western society itself is going through puberty.

Many of the things I've read and learned, most of which didn't seem to have anything to do with each other at first, now give me a framework to describe this transitional period of change, explain why it's happening, and, hopefully, help people and businesses find their way from the old way of doing things to a new way that makes sense in today's world, and the future we're heading into.

My "Why?" is:  I explain to people why today's world seems so chaotic, put it in larger context, and help people work towards finding their own new way of doing things that works in the Information Age.

So I'd like to thank that pissed off bus driver this morning.  Your freakout, whatever led to it, sparked me to find a new understanding of what my work really is all about.  My work doesn't make much money at the moment, but I'm working towards a higher income, in a 21st century kind of way.  One really cool thing about the Information Age is that you don't have to do a job you hate your whole life.  Pretty much anyone can work towards doing something they enjoy, if they're willing to learn the skills needed, and take responsibility for building their own income around that.  There will be a lot less of "working 40 hours a week for a steady paycheck" in the future.  As many as half of today's traditional jobs will be taken over by new technology in the next 20 years.  Bus driver's jobs may be gone in 5 to 10 years. 


That brings me back to that quote from Jesus of Nazareth, "Don't do what you hate."  It's from quote #6 in The Gospel of Thomas.  The full text of that quote (source here), is :

"His disciples asked him and said to him, 'Do you want us to fast?' 'How should we pray?' 'Should we give to charity?' 'What diet should we observe?'

"Jesus said, 'Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven.  After all, there is nothing hidden that won't be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed."

No it's not in the Bible.  But it is in The Gospel of Thomas, a group of sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, collected and recorded by Thomas, one of Jesus' 12 original disciples.  If you're not a religious person, don't worry, I'm not trying save you, convince you to adopt my belief system, or get you to go to a certain church.  That's not my thing, there are plenty of people out there that will gladly tell you everything you believe is wrong, and that they hold the only way of salvation, but not me.

Most of those same people will say this quote from Jesus is bullshit (they may say "bullpuckey"), because it's not in the actual Bible.  Here's what funny about that, there were a whole bunch of early scriptures in use among the early followers of Jesus in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries A.D..  Some of them, but not all of them, are included in what we now call the Bible. 

In 1945, some documents were discovered in sealed jars in a cave, similar to the more famous Dead Sea Scrolls, but those were Jewish writings, parts of the Old Testament of the Bible, and other writings.  The Nag Hammadi texts were named after the city in Egypt near where they were found. These writings include the only full text of The Gospel of Thomas, which is believed to date from the second century A.D., 67- 167 years after the actual death of Jesus of Nazareth. 

The oldest surviving version of what can be called the Bible, a collection of many of those early texts, is the Codex Vaticanus, is housed in the Vatican library, where nobody is allowed to see it. It dates to the early 4th century, 300 to 350 A.D..  That's 267 to 367 years after the actual death of Jesus of Nazareth.  Here's my point, the quote of Jesus, which includes the directive, "Don't do what you hate," is at least 200, maybe 300 years older, than the oldest surviving version of the collection of scriptures known as the Bible itself.  So you can't just brush The Gospel of Thomas away and say it doesn't matter.  We have a copy that dramatically predates the oldest complete copy of the Bible that exists.  There are many pieces and fragments and individual books of the Bible that predate Codex Vaticanus, but the oldest surviving complete "Bible," is a couple of hundred years newer than the complete version of The Gospel of Thomas.  That's why I , myself, wanted to read it, when doing my own research on what religion, spirituality, and the teachings of Jesus, and other spiritual leaders about 20-30 years ago.  There's a lot of crap that's been added to religions, all of them, over 2,000 or more years, and I wanted to try and figure out what the underlying truth was.  That's what led to my own reading of the "Gnostic Gospels," and the Nag Hammadi library texts. 

This all leads to the obvious question, "If Jesus said, "Don't do what you hate," why don't any churches ever mention that?  That's a really good question.  The truth is, ministers at traditional Christian churches pick a Bible verse to preach from (or it's picked for them), every week.  They almost NEVER use actual quotes from Jesus himself.  That's one thing I noticed growing up in several Lutheran churches, and also saw in the Methodist churches I've gone to.  This is a really good question that I doubt many pastors would give a really good answer to.  I think the reason is that much of today's "Christian" ideology can't be backed up by the actual teachings of Jesus himself.  But that's a whole 'nother can of worms... 

Start-up money versus actually selling stuff

Throwing some 80's New Wave at ya, Cyndi Lauper with "Money Changes Everything."  And kicking a trash can full of pretend trash, because... well I don't know.  Hey, the 80's were weird.  A different kind of weird than today, anyhow.

I've been slowly working my way through the book, The $100 Startup, since I left Lancaster three weeks ago.  It's a book that caught my eye in a library a couple years ago, but just not enough to pick up and read.  While working with the bike business up in the desert, I thought it might give me some ideas that would help in my work there.  The object on that was to get a lot of traffic to a big website real fast, and create an enormous cash flow quick.  That is basically the opposite of how I tend to work.  I work slow, step by step, and build gradually towards things.  Ultimately, I realized I wouldn't be able to do what was needed there, and I headed back to Orange County (CA) to build my own small business. 

At this point, talent-wise, I focus on three things:  I do a unique form of Sharpie marker artwork that actually sells.  I blog, write and publish zines and small zine books, and really want to get into writing actual books when I can.  In addition, I have become good at building a web presence and building online traffic to websites for little or no money.  That last skill is one nearly every small business can use, and one I could teach pretty easily in a zine, a small book, an ebook, and online course, a workshop, or in one on one consulting.  The biggest issue I'm dealing with right now is that I'm homeless, and I got down here with about $20 in my pocket.  That's not the greatest place to start.

I've been focusing on scraping up money both in homeless ways (panhandling), and through selling drawings (I've sold two in the last three weeks).  Having been in and out of homelessness for many years, usually while working full time, I'm actually good at surviving on the streets.  It's a lame thing to be good at, but I learned by necessity.  So I've spent three weeks building a very basic level of stability, which is one of the many things people don't understand about homelessness.  Like everyone else, I need a place to sleep, preferably a place where I don't get harassed, beat up, attacked by wild animals, or murdered.  I've got that figured out, for the moment.  I also need a place to go to the bathroom, a place to eat, a place to clean up or shower, a place to charge my old laptop and phone, and a place with wifi to write, blog, connect, and promote my work on social media.  I also need money to buy food, and to buy what's needed to use restrooms, wifi, do laundry, and other basic stuff.  So I've got those basic things figured out, temporarily.  Things are always sketchy, and can change at any time, but I've got places to do the basic things, and can scrape up money for food, bus fare, and to survive day to day.  That gives me a bit of a base to build from.

Once I hit that basic survival level of relative stability, then came the next stage, building a business straight from the streets.  In this next phase, I need to get my California driver's license, I need an address to do that, then I need a 30 day bus pass, because that saves me $80 a month, then I need a small storage unit, because carrying everything I own every place I go really sucks.  Then I need a P.O. box so I have an actual mailing address.  Then I can get a bank account, and THEN I can open an online store, and THEN I can actually sell my artwork, zines, books, and BEGIN to build a business, create a decent cash flow, and finally make enough to rent a weekly room, or maybe a room in an apartment somewhere.

That's the way I've been thinking about things.  Like everyone, I tend to get into ruts in my thinking.  "I need this to do this, so I can do this, so I can do that, so I can FINALLY do the thing I really want to do."  In reading The $100 Startup," I learned a lot of people starting small businesses do the same thing.  They think of all these things they need to do, buy, build, and get ready, so THEN they can begin to get their business going.  But then I read one little paragraph, a simple idea from a small business woman, Naomi Dunford, whose business, IttyBiz, helps other small business people get their ideas up and running.  Naomi's thought was this:

"Many aspiring business owners make two common, but related, mistakes: thinking too much about where to get money to start their project, and thinking too little about where the business income will come from."

-Naomi Dunford, quoted on page 165 of The $100 Startup

That thought hit home with me.  I was basically stuck in homeless guy thinking, "How can I panhandle or sell a couple of drawings to get all these things I need, so THEN I can start building a little business?"  Rather than "Where and how can I sell some copies of my drawings or a zine,starting right now, to start earning an income now, and buy these things I need, to keep building the business into an actual, legit business.  Yesterday was a weird day, everything felt a bit off.  I kept just missing buses, and everything seemed more frustrating than usual.  Living homeless, especially when you're reasonably smart, talented, and hardworking, is incredibly frustrating.  Over the course of the day, I realized this was a big part of my problem, I was focusing on how to scrape up a few hundred dollars in "start-up money," rather than just beginning to sell the things I can get ready to sell over the next couple of days or weeks.  

I pondered this idea all afternoon, and things started to fall into place again.  I realized that I need to just start providing the service and selling the products I have now, and I thought of a few ways I can start doing that, in my current situation.  So today and maybe tomorrow, I'll be getting the basic things together and ready so I can start doing that.  That decision took a ton of weight off my shoulders.  I don't need to stress about getting a 30 day bus pass.  I'll get one day by day, until I can afford a 30 day bus pass, or to get my driver's license, or this or that or the other thing.  

So that's the thought I'm working with right now, thank you Naomi Dunford for sharing that with Chris Gillebeau, who wrote The $100 Startup.  Maybe this idea will resonate with some of you out there in a similar position.  That's what this blog is all about.  

Buy The $100 Startup on Amazon (not a paid link).

IttyBiz - Naomi Dunford's website (and links to her blog and shop)

Robert Kiyosaki on today's economy: "You don't have much time."

As a kid in the 1950's and early 1960's, Robert Kiyosaki lived on the poor side of a sugar plantation town in Hawaii.  His dad was a teacher, and rose to the top education job in government in Hawaii. But Robert's real dad, like most people, didn't understand how money works.  Robert's best friend's dad, who he calls his "Rich Dad," was building a bunch of small businesses at the time, creating assets for the future.  That man went on to become one of the richest men in Hawaii.  As kids, Robert and his best friend asked Rich Dad to teach them about wealth. 

Now, 50-some years later, Robert Kiyosaki and his wife Kim own 7,000 rental properties, as well as gold, silver, interests in oil drilling companies, and many other things.  His investments provide a huge monthly income, he doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to do.  He could go fishing or play golf everyday, no matter what the economy does. 

He writes books and teaches people about how money and finances work, because he knows how bad the system is rigged against average people, and that pisses him off.  He knows where things are heading.  Here he shares his views of the current bubbles in our financial world, he knows a huge crash is coming, and he's been teaching people financial education since 1997.  This video gives a quick look at why most people are struggling these days, and I highly recommend watching it, and then reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and his other books that interest you at that point. 

"Assets put money in your pocket, liabilities take money out of your pocket." 

-Robert Kiyosaki's  

fundamental understanding learned from Rich Dad.

Buy Rich, Poor Dad on Amazon.  This is NOT a paid link.

My first shot at running a business

That's me on the right, running the Ferris Wheel at The Fun Spot, in Boise, Idaho, during the summer of 1985.  The three young women on the ride are Kim, Michelle, and Pam, who all worked there.  The Fun Spot was a tiny little amusement park tucked away in Julia Davis Park, close to the Boise Zoo, in downtown Boise, next to the Boise River.  This is my carnie street cred photo.  I spent so much time running the Ferris Wheel that I used to have pizzas delivered to me right there on the ride on really busy days.  When the the pizza guy showed up, everyone got an extra long ride as I ate the first couple of slices.  Photo by Vaughn Kidwell.

An 18-year-old with a dozen employees under me...

Like so many good and bad things that happened in high school, it all started with a party.  I was grounded for two months of my senior year in high school, 1983-84.  I couldn't go out with my friends at all.  That was because I threw one party that year.  The party itself wasn't such a bad idea.  The bad idea part was that I threw that party in my dad's boss' house, that I was house sitting over Christmas break.  The house didn't get trashed or anything, but I got caught, and put on family house arrest for two months.

Finally, at the beginning of March, I was allowed to go out with my friends again.  We drove around in my friends' VW bugs, tried to meet girls, and then heard about a party in some trailer park, typical Boise Friday night.  About 40 high school kids were crowded into this trailer, and I think someone bought a pony keg, which was in the back bedroom if the tiny single wide, and kids were lined up trying to get a beer.  After the earlier trouble that year, I made a pact not to drink that night, trying to keep out of trouble.  My best friend Darrin, however, was bent on getting well buzzed, if not fully drunk.  He'd had a few beers already as we entered the party.  He grabbed a cup and weaseled his way to the back bedroom.  I stayed in the tiny living room, and tried to talk to some girls.  Since I was deathly shy, that wasn't going well, as usual, so I ended up talking to some other friend I saw there.  Suddenly the cry went out, "COPS!"  We tried to bail out of the tiny, single wide trailer, but there was nowhere to go.  The police were at the only door.  The police just stood outside the front door, and wrote everyone of us a ticket for underage drinking as we walked out.  At least half of the kids didn't even get their cup filled up at that point, though some had been drinking earlier.  I didn't have a drop that night, but it didn't matter, I was there, and I got a ticket, too.

As my friends re-grouped, all of us with tickets in hand, we realized that only one person managed to get away and not get a ticket.  That was Darrin, my best friend, the only guy who was actually pretty drunk that night.  He didn't drink anymore than the rest of us normally, but he wasn't driving that night, so he made the most of it.  He managed to slip out a tiny bedroom window and run into some nearby bushes, and escape. 

As you can imagine, the fact that 40 kids got tickets at a party, a lame party at that, a rare occurrence then, was news around school.  Us 40 ticketed kids started to get together at lunch, and strategize on how to handle the tickets, since we all had court dates coming up.  It was in those lunch powwows that I got to know a kid named Doug.  We hit it off, and became friends as the ticket process moved along.

As far as the ticket went, I went to court with three other people on the same day, we all had a pact to plead "Not Guilty," and fight the tickets, since most of the kids had little, if any beer since we got there minutes before getting busted.  When it came time to plead, the three before me caved in and pleaded Guilty.  Fuckers.  Some integrity.  But I held tough and pleaded Not Guilty.  The way things turned out, since so many kids got the same ticket, the judge gave them all a warning, and no sentence.  When I had my trial a couple weeks later, the judge was informed about what happened with the others, and I got off with a warning, too.  But that whole big group had become better friends because of those tickets.

When late April rolled around, and we started thinking about summer jobs, Doug said he worked at The Fun Spot, which had six amusement rides, a food stand, and a miniature golf course.  Doug, a senior like me, was the manager of The Fun Spot that summer.  He worked there the summer before, and was assistant manager then.  He started going in on the weekends, painting, and doing some other maintenance stuff, and asked if I wanted to start working there.  So I went to work there, for the whopping wage of $2.05 an hour.  I think minimum wage was $3.35 an hour then, but because of some Idaho law designed for migrant farm workers, the owner could pay us less than the federal minimum wage.  Even in 1984, $2.05 an hour was lame pay.  But it was some pay.  

As the summer got going, and I became a ride operator, Doug tapped me, and a guy named Brian, a year younger than us, as assistant managers.  We ran the park during the few days Doug wasn't there.  Halfway through the summer, Doug got a higher paying job doing construction work, and Brian and me took over as managers.  Suddenly, within a week or two of my 18th birthday, I was running a small amusement park, along with Brian.  We had 12 employees under us, and the owner, who also ran a construction company, would drop off the cash drawer in the morning, and then take off.  He came in to do major maintenance, and to check on things now and then.  But he let us run the whole business operations on a day to day basis. 

For nearly 20 years he had been giving kids who were 17-18-19 years old the chance to actually manage and run a business.  He'd tell us the basics, and then it was up to us.  We had to schedule employees, maintain the rides day to day, train the employees, get high school kids to pull weeds and mow the lawn area when it was 92 degrees out, make sure things ran smoothly, handle complaints from customers, test the rides every morning, clean the pine needles off the miniature golf course, handle employee disputes and drama, and actually run the business all day long.

Brian quit near the end of the summer, and I was sole manager for the last two or three weeks.  It was a tiny, goofy, little place, and our friends often made fun of us for working there.  But it was a huge responsibility for an 18-year-old, and experience I couldn't get anywhere else at that age.  Even before The Fun Spot, I had this sense that I wanted to work for myself, and run my own business in life.  But I was deathly shy by nature, had trouble talking to strangers, was a terrible salesman, and just didn't have the personality to actually start my own business in my 20's. 

I wound up getting serious about the new sport of BMX freestyle and moved to California.  Ultimately, I wound up in Southern California, working as a kind of sidekick to several really talented young entrepreneurs.  As I did all kinds of work for them, and watched how they ran their businesses day after day, I got a sort of informal apprenticeship in enrepreneurship.  I also began to read about personal development and other books, and began the long journey to become a person who could actually run a legit business of my own.

Now, at 53-years-old, I'm still on that journey.  Technically, I've never run an "actual business" of my own, with a business license and all.  But I've done a whole slew of other jobs, managed other people's businesses, and I've produced videos and sold them through small distributors.  I was also a taxi driver for 6 1/2 years, which is not a job, it's actually a self-directed small business with really high overhead for the income possible. 

So now, with a mixture of artwork, blogging, writing and publishing zines (and eventually actual books), and social media skills I've learned selling my artwork, I'm finally building a small business of my own.  Part of what I want to do with that business is to help other people who are building or running their own small businesses, with social media and some of the particular skills I've developed over the 35 years, since I started working at a little amusement park in Boise called The Fun Spot.

I'll be sharing a bunch of things I've learned at various small businesses in this blog, as well as newer ideas on how technology has changed the whole world of business in general, and how Disruption caused by new technology is tossing old business models out the window, and opening up new opportunities.  I'm also an amateur futurist, and looking forward, I think America is going to need to create millions of small businesses in the next 20 years, as things continue to change rapidly.

So that's where I'm coming from, I hope many of you find stuff that helps your business in this blog. 

The Big Picture... Why I'm blogging about building small and micro businesses

The woman above is a former quant (math super geek) at investment banks Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns.  Nomi Prins now writes and speaks on the economy, and specifically how the central banks of the world have led us down a path that has completely reshaped the world economy in a dangerous way.  Her latest book is Collusion: How Central Banks Rigged the World.  Her work really helps explain where the global and major nation economies are headed, dictated by the actions of the world's central banks over the last 10-12 years.

Big trends in today's work and business world

There are a bunch of big issues happening in our world right now that I see having a major impact on every single person, at some level.  I've looked into these, to the extent I've been able to, over the last few years.  I don't think there is any way that at top down approach will even begin to address these issues in time.  I've come to the conclusion that the best way to deal with the underlying issues happening in the world of money, business, and the economy, is to encourage tens of millions of Americans (and people in other countries) to create their own micro or small businesses.  A "micro business" is generally defined as a one person business.  Without large scale entrepreneurship, I see no other way to keep most of the adults in the world working in some functional way, in th efuture we're heading towards.  

Here are the big issues I'm looking at that led to this conclusion, and why this blog, and many future works of mine, will work on this theme of encouraging people to create their own "jobs", by creating small local businesses, a few of which, inevitably, will turn into large businesses and create other jobs.

-The continual rise in new technologies- Like it or not, new technologies, of all kinds, are continuously being invented, some of which survive and get implemented into business and people's everyday lives.  The tech genie will not go back in the bottle, we're going to have to deal with all these technologies as they enter our lives, and figure out how to adapt to them.  Many of our biggest problems today stem from not doing that very well.

-The Big Transition- This is my name for the transition from an Industrial Age society to a knowledge-based, or Information Age society.  Futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler (2007 Alvin Toffler interview) pinned the beginning of this change at 1956, the year there were more white collar (office) workers in the U.S. than blue collar (factory/industrial) workers.  I believe we're not IN the Information Age now, but rather in a really long transition period between the fading Industrial Age and the growing Information Age.  During this period, every industry, every business model, and every institution of any kind will be disrupted, and either collapse, or be intentionally reformed, into an Information Age version of itself, if it's still viable at all.  Non-viable institutions, whether businesses or other organizations, will simply fade away into obscurity.  I guestimate the end of this transition as being around 2040.

-The loss of another 90-95 million jobs in the next 15-20 years- This often cited 2013 study, by Oxford University, in England, found that 47% of jobs (in 2013) could be completely lost to new technologies by the year 2030.  In the U.S., that's roughly 92 MILLION jobs that will disappear between 2013 and 2034.  That's in addition to the tens of millions of jobs lost when the masses of American factories closed down, from the 1960's to the early 2000's.  These jobs were lost to both outsourcing and new technology, like industrial robots and computerization of so many industrial procedures. 

Obviously, 47% of all jobs, or roughly 92 million jobs, is a HUGE number, and it's easy to argue that the report overstated things.  OK, let's say the highly intelligent people at Oxford were off by 20% in their estimate, and only 73.5 millions jobs wind up disappearing.  The number is still astronomical, and catastrophic to the American workforce.  Whatever the final number ends up being, it will affect tens of millions of Americans, and hundreds of millions of other people, around the world.

-Disruption of industries and traditional business models- The new technologies of all kinds, like the growth of the internet and smart phones, in our everyday lives, for instance, have completely changed how people communicate.  This has changed who people communicate to, how fast they can communicate, what types of communication they can use (text, voice, photos, video) and what portion of the world an average person can communicate with.  These changes in communication abilities, along with so many other changes, have changed how business can, and does, operate, which led to entirely new business models.  As younger people, armed with new technologies, experiment and explore, some create new business models that disrupt, and completely change entire industries very quickly.

There was a time when we listened to FM radio, and then went to a record store and paid $15 or $20 for a band's album of ten songs, on vinyl, CD, or cassette.  Those days are gone, disrupted by Napster, then the iPod and other MP3 technologies, and other things since, like steaming.  This type and scale of disruption will happen in every industry, in my opinion, and perhaps several times in some industries.  Yet even today, in 2019, most small businesses barely use the new technologies and platforms to anywhere near their full potential.  Even major corporations struggle with the world where nearly every consumer has a voice, a video camera, and a way to engage much of the world, share their opinion, and buy merchandise from their phone or laptop.

-The Fed and other central banks working to keep interest rates artificially low and to continue quantitative easing policies- This is the point that former investment banker, Nomi Prins, is making in the video above.  The Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, and other central banks, lowered interest rates to help businesses keep access to credit, during and after, the 2008 economic crash.  Some countries actually have or had negative interest rates, meaning banks and businesses got paid to borrow money, in essence.  Central banks also implemented "quantitative easing," which basically means they either used taxpayer money, or created money out of thin air, then bought their country's government bonds with it.  In some cases they even bought stocks of certain corporations.

Imagine you cold write a a magic check, that didn't have a bank account balance backing it up.  You could just write a check for a million dollars, deposit that check in your bank, and have a million dollars in your account.  Then you could take that million dollars, and buy products from your own business.  Your business would soar, right?  That's an oversimplified way of explaining the $21 TRILLION (a trillion is 1,000 billion, just to remind you) in debt that central banks have pumped into the financial system in the last ten years, and how they did it.  The Federal Reserve used this money to buy U.S. government bonds, and other central banks bought bonds from their own country. That's what quantitative easing is, buying your country's loans (debt) to add money to the financial system.

The ultra low interest rates and quantitative easing have added incredible amounts of debt to the system, 21 TRILLION dollars, which helped keep the world's financial system afloat, after the 2007-2009 crash/Great Recession.  These programs were supposed to be temporary measures.  But the central bankers didn't know how to stop these measures without creating another crash.  So the central banks just kept these plans going, kind of like keeping Grandpa on oxygen in the hospital after a heart attack, a stroke, and kidney failure.  He's on life support, but there's not much hope if you take him off.  That's basically been the state of the world economy for the last decade.  If you take the oxygen away, Grandpa's going to have a hard time breathing, and will probably die. 

If interest rates go up, even just to "normal" levels, then the countries and businesses who've racked up so much debt have to make higher payments.  A lot of them are borrowing money just to stay in business right now, and can't afford higher payments.  So the next crash will be like 2008 in many ways, but with much, MUCH more debt, more debt than ever in human history, that can come crashing down.  Yeah, that's gonna suck.

-The college system and the student debt crisis- The main trigger that led to the 2008 crash was $1.3 trillion in "sub prime" mortgage debt.  Basically, millions of people who didn't have great credit, and who couldn't really afford homes, were allowed to get mortgages to buy homes from about 1997-2007.  This happened because Wall Street financiers found a way to buy those mortgages, and repackage them into other investments called CDO's, and make a ton of fees selling those other investments to institutional investors, like cities, states, and retirement funds. 

Over the last ten years, student loan debt has been bought, repackaged, and resold in a nearly identical way to the sub prime mortgages. The repackaged student loan investments are called SLABS, Student Loan Asset Backed Securities.  Now, if every student pays back their loans on time, these are solid investments.  But in this article, for example, we read that a million students default on their loans every year, and 40% of all students could default on their student loans by 2023.  If a significant number of students default, then the SLABS lose value, and could be devalued, or straight out collapse, like sub prime mortgages did in 2008. 

If that happens, which seems VERY likely, then colleges across the country lose a significant amount of their income.  Colleges and universities are now the main employers in many small and mid-sized cities.  So if the income of colleges goes down dramatically, then the economy of most college towns will go down significantly.  Here's the bad news, most of the 150-200 good sized cities in the U.S. are college towns, where colleges and universities are the top, or one of the top employers.  So that's not good.

-The Rise of the Creative Class and Tech clustering, as described by Richard Florida- What started as research to figure out why top tech students were leaving Pittsburgh after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University, turned into Professor Richard Florida's life's work, including discovering a new category of workers, the Creative Class.  He found that about 1/3 of today's workers make their living using some form of creativity, problem solving, and decision making.  These are the tech workers of the world, but also artists, teachers, media workers, scientists, engineers, doctors and others.  One big finding of Florida's research showed that Creative Class people tend to find the place they want to live, and then look for work.  They cluster in certain areas which already have other creative scenes, like places known for good art and music scenes.  Very simply, highly creative people like to live around other creative people.  The tech companies, unlike previous Industrial Age companies, go to where the talented people are, they don't just go to the city that gives them the biggest tax incentives.

So now we have much of the high technology industry, mostly clustered in about ten metro areas: The San Francisco Bay area, Boston, Seattle, New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Austin, the Raleigh Research Triangle, and a handful of smaller tech hubs.  This means that most of the United States., DOES NOT have a strong tech industry presence in its communities.  Those are many of the same areas that lost most of their high paying manufacturing jobs as factories moved overseas, or lost human jobs to industrial robots and new technology.  So we have 10 or 12 metro areas surging economically, and most of the rest struggling to create enough high paying jobs for their population.

-The "Geographic Recession" caused by tech clustering- The tech company clustering, just explained above, led to huge areas of the country that never fully came back from the loss of manufacturing jobs, and never came back from the Great Recession of 2007-2009.  For much of the U.S., particularly rural, small town, and small city America, it feels like the Great Recession is permanent.  So we have tech hubs where 30%-40% of the people are doing really well, but the other 60%, largely service workers, struggle to afford rising rent, home buying, and other costs.  Those centers are where much of the population is concentrated. 

Then we have most of the country, by area, where a much smaller percentage of people are living really well, and 65%-85% of the people are struggling to survive, working one, two, or three low wage or gig jobs.  The housing prices are much more affordable in those areas, other costs are often lower as well, but there aren't near enough high paying jobs for the majority of people to live well. 

-Political Polarization in the U.S.- The current political polarization in the U.S. has deep roots in this economic divide, though there are other major factors as well.  The tech hub cities, mostly urban and more socially liberal, tend to vote highly Democrat, and the rural areas, which for 40 years have become much more socially conservative, tend to vote largely Republican.  The inability to make a good living both from older former factory workers, and for younger workers now saddled with huge student loan debt, has led to a huge populist movement here in the U.S. (and Europe as well).  Here's the crazy thing, younger, college educated workers struggling with student debt tend to favor the far Left politically, gathering behind Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and other Progressives and Social Democrats.  Meanwhile, older former factory workers, and rural, mostly White people, also struggling to make a decent living today, have been drawn to the far Right, gathering behind Donald Trump. 

The crazy thing is, most of the people drawn to the populist movement, both political Left and Right, are becoming polarized for the same reason, they are having trouble making a good living in today's fast changing world.  But for ideological reasons, often just because of where they grew up, they have become polarized to opposite sides of the political spectrum, which has shattered both the Republican and the Democrat parties.  The traditional power players in those parties are struggling to maintain power, as new candidates farther from the center, keep gaining ground.  This draws the politicians farther apart, so they have become tribal, and often refuse to compromise at all.

So we have tens of millions of average Americans pissed off for the same reason, because they can't make a good living these days.  But because they've been attracted to opposite sides of the political world, the people they vote for can't get much, if anything, done.  So at a time when we need a ton of "roll up the sleeves hard work" in Washington, and state capitals, to make lots of hard compromises that are in the best interest of almost everyone, just the opposite is happening.  This is why I have no faith in serious top down programs happening to deal with all the issues I'm listing here.  The poltical polarization will continue to just make all these issues worse, mostly by ignoring them or not acting at all. 

-The Next Great Recession... coming soon to a business near you-  Oh, and if the geographic recession crippling most of small town America, and the insurmountable student debt crippling metro/tech hub America, isn't enough, all these things are setting the stage for one hell of a Next Great Recession.  On average, we have a recession every 4 to 10 years.  We're at the end of year 10 since the last recession officially ended, at the moment.  As I explained above, the ultra low interest rates set by The Federal Reserve and other central bankers, have had our economy on "life support" for ten years.  Current Fed Chairman Powell, did exactly what he was supposed to do, and really slowly began to raise interest rates back towards a more reasonable level in 2017-2018.  This gave The Fed a little room to act when another recession begins.  He also reduced the number of U.S. bonds owned by The Fed, bought in the quantitative easing program.

The stock markets freaked out as rates were raised, because low interest money is like crack to Wall Street, and they're seriously addicted.  As I predicted months before, the Dow Jones 30 (Industrial Average), and the broader stock indexes, began to drop a few weeks after President Trump signed the huge tax cuts in December of 2017.  Since then, nearly every form of manipulation possible has been thrown at the economy to keep it from crashing.   Most recently, hints of lowering interest rates and more quantitative easing have given.  This appears to be a desperate attempt to keep the stock markets (the visible "economy") up, giving the illusion that everything's going well financially.  The Republicans, of course, want the economy to appear to be strong until the 2020 presidential elections, because that tilts things in their favor politically.

The markets keep trying to begin their normal, and much needed, correction, and then are pushed and propped back up.  But they only go to right around the previous highs, now approaching Dow 27,000.  The fact that they keep stalling at nearly the same levels shows that there's no underlying reasons for the markets to surge significantly higher.  If there was real momentum, real growth, we'd be at Dow 30,000, or more, right now.  Look at the charts for the last 5 years, four times at the high levels in the last two years, for the DIJA 30, the S&P 500, and the Russell 2000 (one peak's a bit higher than the other 3 on the Russell).  The Nasdaq 100 has been around the same highs three times.  The fact that the markets hit such a dramatic wall of resistance, so many times, over two years, shows there's not much upside left to be had.

If the Fed actually lowers interest rates, that will definitely help the stock market, temporarily.  But lowering interest rates is also a signal The Fed thinks we're either in a recession, or weeks or months from entering a new one, as you can see looking at when interest rates were dropped on this chart when you look at 1990, 2001, and 2008.

-The Retail Apocalypse- One recent article spoke of more than 20,000 retail store closings, when you add stores closed in 2017, 2018, and planned closures in 2019.  Another 15,000 to 20,000, or more, retail stores closed from about 2008 to 2014.  This article from May 2019 claims that another 12,000 individual stores may close this year alone (2019), and up to 75,000 MORE STORES may close by 2026.  Remember "the economy is doing great," and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  That's what we're told by politicians and much of the business news media, day after day.  It's the business news media's job to keep people excited about being in the stock markets, but it's a hard job these days.

What the hell is going on?  Here's what's going on.  The "Retail Apocalypse" is the technology enabled Disruption of the Industrial Age, consumer goods, sales and distribution system.  Large numbers of good sized stores, spread across the nation in malls and shopping centers, worked well through the 20th century.  But millions of people would rather order many things on their phones or computers now, and have them delivered. 

Far fewer people want to take the family to the mall these days.  Because of this, 400 of the 1100+ American malls, are expected to close by about 2023.  Some have closed, and many more are on the Dead Mall list.  Those are the malls with 70% or fewer stores still open in them.  There's even the DeadMalls.com website chronicling the demise of U.S. malls in real time.  What's happening is that the Industrial Age retail stores system, which was great for 100 years, is breaking down, and being replaced by online sales, big box stores, and discount retailers.  That's Disruption in action.  The stores that are closing down are/were run by people who didn't take changing technology seriously, or simply didn't bother to adapt to it in time, if at all.

It's common to hear people blam Amazon for all of this.  It's not Amazon's fault, as so many people claim.  Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, was just one of the few who saw the incredible potential of the internet to sell stuff, and then worked his ass off to build a new way of selling and distributing merchandise.  It's not just Amazon.  Ebay allows hundreds of thousands of smaller sellers to do the same.  So does the Amazon's resellers program, along with Etsy, Shopify, and other online sales platforms.  You can bitch about Amazon, which turned 25 years old yesterday, by the way.  But Sears (& Roebucks) disrupted the small town general stores with mail order in the same way, 140 or so years ago.  It just took them 50 years to complete the process, because things moved much slower then.

Why am I not mentioning global warming and climate change?- Global warming, climate change, and changing weather patterns are huge issues, no doubt about it.  These issues affect some people directly now, and will affect millions more people 20-30-40 years from now.  But the economic issues I'm writing about here are affecting most people right now.  These issues will affect every single person in the U.S., and most of the world, in the next 2 or 3 years.  These economic issues will affect far more people, far more deeply, far sooner, than climate change.  These economic issues, which are basically being ignored by nearly everyone, could possible take down civilization as we know it.  There's that much crazy shit happening, and coming down the pike soon.  

Climate change is only an issue, if we're around to deal with it.  These economic issues are a much bigger deal, that will hit far more people, far sooner.  That's why these have my attention now.

And now for the good news...

"Recessions are when the whole world goes on sale, but almost nobody wants to buy."

-Steve Emig (me)

If you're one of the people who actually read this big article (congratulations! And thank you), you now have a bird's eye view of why so many things seem so crazy these days, in the job market, business, and the economic world.  These things are all tied together.  Most people don't want to think or learn about "the economy," yet the bitch about not having enough money every day.  Money connects and affects every single one of us, unless maybe you live in a cabin in the Yukon Territory where you fish, hunt, and trade goods with Sasquatch.  I'm guessing not many of you fall into that category.

You now have an idea where things are headed.  You have the internet, Google, and You Tube, you can verify the facts I've shared, and contemplate my original ideas. You can learn, from free online how-to articles and videos, how these new technologies work, and how to apply them to your work and life.  Most importantly, you can look at the future or your own industry, your own job, or that business you've been thinking of starting, and see what makes sense for you to do going forward.

-The internet and other platforms that can help almost anyone build a small business-  Nearly every individual in the U.S. can access the internet, and can learn, communicate, share, trade, and sell, with millions of other people now.  Using online platforms and phone apps, you can make money in thousands of ways that weren't available a generation ago.  But you have to come to grips with the fact that all of this is actually happening, whether you like it or not.  That ability to simply acknowledge what's happening, is one of the biggest obstacles society faces.  Millions of people simply refuse to believe facts and reality these days.  The future will be a huge punch to the gut, (and everywhere else) to these people, and they will really, really struggle with it all.


I get it.  Hey, I liked shooting BMX videos on a Hi-8 camera, editing with the actual tapes, and making VHS copies of my video to sell, in 1990.  But those days are over.  I got walloped by Disruption in the taxi industry in 2003, and struggled with it until late 2007.  I wound up homeless.  I was a diehard Luddite, I didn't want to deal with "that internet/cyber stuff."  And I paid a huge price for that. 

I changed my mind after I started blogging for fun in 2008, and began the long process of figuring out what it takes to be a writer (and now artist as well) in today's high tech, hyper-connected world.  I learned bit by bit, very slowly.  You don't go to college for this stuff, you learn online, with self-directed education.  You do this in addition to college, if you want to be an employee.  You learn this instead of college, if you want to start your own business.  That's your choice, each person has a different path and dreams in life. 

I'm still struggling, and homeless once again, for the moment.  But I've sold thousands of dollars worth of art, and some written work, online in the last three years.  I'm getting to the level of making a decent living, bit by bit.  This blog is to share ideas and help other people who are, or want to, do the same thing, in your own way.