Once this million dollars comes into my life, I plan to get a nice piece of land out in the country and build a small, modest home on it.  When I say small, I mean it.  Maybe 500 square feet, maybe less.  Perhaps a little more, but I’m sure most of that space will go to waste.  I plan to live there and write/explore.  I find that writing has a lot of solace in it and I enjoy it immensely.  I may write for others, or even just myself.  It won’t matter, because I won’t need any more money for the rest of my life.  I’ll eat very healthily and be at my physical peak, whatever that means for me.  And I won’t invest or anything, I’ll just have a savings account where it will earn interest at least equal to inflation.  I just need to get this damn blog on the map and watch the cash roll in.

It would be nice to be able to devote my entire life to what I believe in, but right now I still have to earn a living.  Earning a living takes a lot of energy out of me, and I can no longer work as hard on other pursuits.  We should be on the  front lines starting a revolution, but we have jobs and cars and homes to pay for and it seems only the unemployed have any free time.  These are people who are most likely wasting much of their free time drinking alcohol or using illicit drugs.  No offense intended.  I’m sure there are a lot of good workers who lost their jobs, and I’m not referring to them.  Why aren’t these people rioting in the streets?  Why aren’t they protesting our governmental tyranny?  Why aren’t they defending the Earth from corporate enslavement?  I don’t know.

There are some people out there who do make a difference, but the problem is that there aren’t enough of them.  And these people are mostly fringe, which gives them far less credibility than Noam Chomsky.  I’ve read articles about the freegans, who live without money, or as little money as possible, living off of the throw-away culture that we have created.  Here’s an article from the NY Times about this:  The Freegan Establishment.  They are considered modern hunter-gatherers.  They are living what the perceive as an ethical life with hardly any money, and people like me, and some others who are far worse, can’t see themselves doing this unless they had a windfall of money.

These people are squatting abandoned homes, eating food out of dumpsters, and traveling across the country while the rest of us are stuck at our soul-crushing jobs so that we can afford our mortgages and car payments.  They are doing what they believe should be rights to food, shelter, and autonomy.  But this world we live in denies those basic human rights to anyone who isn’t willing to become a corporate slave or scammer.  And believe me, there are plenty of scammers out there, especially on Wall Street.  This world is insane, and yet we are forced to go along with it or be shot, jailed, or simply bent to the will of our corporate masters as they kill the Earth with a giant smile.  It makes me sick, but hardly anyone is revolting.

Is it ignorance?  Is it hopelessness?  Is it depression?  What in the world is holding people back?  Do most people actually think this world is sane?  Is that the case?  Seriously?  Just take a look around you.  Look at the history books (that ironically have been edited from what truly happened, substantially).  Read books about forbidden history, the stuff that people who wrote history didn’t want you to know.  Realize that this world is under control by sinister forces, with questionable origins, and that they are conditioning you every day with their constant propaganda of telling you how to feel, what to think, who to admire, and who to condemn.  That is part of the reason I stopped watching television altogether, save for a few instances.  They can’t get to you if you don’t play their game.

When I read about people breaking free of the system and living a different way, it inspires me.  It gives me hope that there are cracks to break through.  The few people who do live on the fringes of society seem to have more fulfilling lives, because they actually stand for something.  Most people do jobs that are meaningless in the context of the meaning of life.  They usually do things that anyone could do if they had the necessary skills, and most jobs are less than extraordinary.  They are a means to and end, a fucking paycheck that most people spend completely before the next payday, thereby perpetuating their need for continuous employment.  But there is a better way.  You don’t have to let the system hold you over a barrel.

You can live very well cheaply while still working and save tons of money.  I’ve done it.  Others have done it.  You just have to adjust your thinking from the high-budget lifestyle to the low-budget lifestyle.  I haven’t bought new shoes in over 2 years.  I haven’t bought new clothes in longer.  I receive clothing as gifts, which I wear.  I eat a pretty healthy diet for less than you would expect.  I do own a car, but I bought it cheap from my grandfather for about half its value.  I very rarely buy things I don’t need.  I hardly ever go out to eat.  I am mentally out of the system, but I still hold down a job and do it well.  I just am not as dependent on it as others, whose life would fall apart if they got fired or laid off.

I’ve got some links in my sidebar about how to do this, and the most pivotal essay is Ran Prieur’s How to Drop Out. He articulates better than me, but we have similar messages.  He is in his 40s, but it feels like his consciousness is somewhere in the mid 20’s range.  This guy is what I do to the extreme.  He even bought land that he is building a cobwood house on.  He may be a semi-dropout, but he makes a hell of a lot more sense than those indoctrinated politicians, and by following this guy’s example, we can create heaven on Earth, instead of this toxic and unstable civilization.  Read some of his other essays as well.  Some very interesting stuff there.

Talkin’ bout revolution… Let’s do it!  We just need to get enough people aware of what is going on in the world.  And we need to get these people to start living the way us “dropouts” do.

If you found this post insightful, helpful, or thought-provoking, feel free to donate to my site.

For the past few years, when people have asked me what I want for Christmas, I’ve often said, “I don’t know.”  The only thing I would possibly want would be maybe an Amazon gift card to add a few more books to my Kindle, or something that I will get continuous value from, like a mug warmer or a new desk for my computer.  But I don’t really need those things, I just want them.  The desk I have is okay, it works, and I would have to get rid of this one in order to get a new one.  What I could really use is a small filing cabinet that could fit where the tower part of a computer would go if I had a desktop computer.  That way I could be a bit more organized.  Ever since the drawer bottom came out of my one drawer in this desk, I’ve been using a box on the floor.  But it hasn’t caused any suffering yet.  It’s just a minor inconvenience.  And I could easily head down to the Salvation Army and find a file cabinet that fits my needs and I could easily afford it.

What is it we actually need?  Food, water, some kind of shelter, people who support us, and fuel for those terribly cold months some areas of the world experience.  That’s pretty much it.  It is not required to have an iPhone or a Sony Entertainment System.  Those are things that can easily be done without.  Most of us would say we need a computer or a television, but that is simply not true.  Even though today’s world is full of them, and many people’s jobs rely on these new technologies, are they really necessary?  No, but they are still worth having sometimes because we all like to use them every once in awhile.  Self-deprivation is no fun, and we should have things we use, but things we do not use or will never use should be donated, or simply thrown away.  Or even recycled.

Many people today are minimalists and they don’t even know it.  There are people who are minimalists by necessity, because they have very little or no money.  Then there are those who are very wealthy who own very little, because they’ve seen beyond the socially-conditioned way of life and choose to only own what is useful to them.  It’s all about the mindset.  Not to mention that it is wise to save money and buy less now before the complete collapse of the economy.  It won’t take long for this to happen, just a few decades at the most.  We have no idea of the times that we are headed for.  Things certainly haven’t gotten any better, and if that’s any indication of how our future will be, then we need to stop spending fast.  I just hope our government stops printing money so that we don’t experience hyperinflation, which will make all the money we saved up essentially worthless.

I’m trying to justify minimalism in these hard times, because it will be best for us when it all comes crashing down.  And that all this spending, all this debt, is exactly the problem.  Stimulating the economy through credit cards and loans is not going to solve the problem, but just make it worse.  Do you hear that, Washington?  Stop all the spending and maybe someday we’ll get out of this recession.  Stop spending all our hard-earned money on things that don’t benefit us, like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Those wars haven’t helped the American people one bit.  In fact, it has crippled them.  So has all this outsourcing to China and other countries that will willingly exploit their people to send up cheaply-made merchandise.  Is this the world we were meant to live in?  I think not.

Why aren’t people willing to do the things that are necessary to creating the world we were meant to have?  It’s going to start on a conscious level, moving down to the physical.  We need to have a global rise in consciousness before we can get anything done.  We need leaders to get those who are not quite there yet up to our level.  We need to educate people about what is really going on in the world, so that they can make informed choices on what to buy and what not to buy.  Not only that, but what to do, and what not to do.  If we stopped buying things from the corporations who exploit other nations and other people, then they would have no power whatsoever.  If we all stopped going to Walmart and Target and Best Buy, then perhaps we would see a change for the better.  If people would actually think of why something is so cheap and think of the people who actually have to produce these things, there would be the start of a consciousness revolution.

It sure is a mad world out there.  And most people would rather be left in the dark about it, because if they don’t know, they don’t feel they are contributing to it.  But that is sheer willful ignorance.  We are all contributing to this world in one way or another, and we can decide in which way we want to contribute.  We can move towards fear or we can move towards love.  We can keep going on this suicidal trainwreck, or we can stop the train and figure out which steps need to be taken to restore the world to what it once was.  For the benefit of all creatures, not just our narrow, unenlightened self-interest.  Why is it that everyone who ever told us to live together in harmony either got shot or killed in some other way?  When are we finally going to be ready to hear this, much less do it?

Let’s take a look back at the history of this blog.  I started this blog sometime in 2006 to make money and eventually be able to live off of it.  That was my primary intention.  I wanted to help people, too, just make money as well.  I figured that I’m a pretty good writer, and I have ideas about things, so why not offer them to the general public?  So I did.  Within a year, I bought my first domain name and went from Blogger to Wordpress.  I did okay with traffic for a little while, mostly because I was posting on topics that people actually wanted to read, like Personal Development and comedy.  It was a time when I was starting to truly build a small, but sizable following, and my ranking was somewhere in the 1 millions.  I still hadn’t made a dime from this site, but at least I was getting somewhere in terms of success.

Then I started really enjoying nature and started reading stuff about simplifying my life and how we humans are destroying the Earth, which is still true regardless of how few people want to hear it.  I got my inspiration from people like Dave Pollard and Ran Prieur, both who run pretty successful websites, at least compared to mine.  Dave Pollard has been running his blog since 2002 and Ran Prieur’s website has been up around just as long.  I totally resonated with what they were saying and jumped on that bandwagon pretty quickly.  And I still feel this way today, to a point, but the more I rant about it, the more people don’t want to read it.  I know the old adage that people will listen when they are ready and only when they are ready, but the planet is dying, for God’s sake!  And there isn’t much being done about it.  But that kind of talk still falls on deaf ears I guess, or maybe, just maybe, people are so entrenched in their current way of life that they would rather die than give it up.

Finally, I started talking about stuff like who are we, and what is reality?  I guess that’s what caused my traffic “spike.”  I’ve been steadily increasing in traffic for the last few months, although it is a small increase.  I’m still not an A-list blogger, nor do I think that will ever happen with this blog, mostly because my past entries are way too chaotic and I don’t have a good framework for high page views.  I tried installing plugins like ‘Related Posts,’ and it ruined my site until I was able to remove it.  It caused all the blog entries to become incoherent lines of code.  I have no idea why all the sidebars disappear when I click on just  one entry and read it.  I am clueless when it comes to computer programming and I hate it with a passion.  I’ve never been a fan of programming, and I don’t think I ever will.  It’s just so tedious and exacting.

I wish I had the work ethic or the programming skills to make this website better, but I don’t.  I wish I had someone to do it for me, but I don’t.  I am thinking of creating another website so I can start over from scratch, but without my name attached to it, so that way maybe I can rebuild some traffic and have mostly articles I know people want to read.  Not only that, I want to create a website that is much more technically sound than this one, and I have to learn all these skills before attempting this.  I want to still keep this website, but as a secondary one.  I’ll still post here semi-regularly, as I have for the past 4 years, but it will be less of a disappointment if I can get another blog off the ground where I can actually build sizable traffic.  It will be a whole new format, a whole new platform for me.  I won’t be linking to it from here.  I’ll be promoting it elsewhere, far far away from the stigma of a low traffic website.  It is going to be completely original because I know exactly what it is I want to do with it.

I’m going to have a central theme on that website.  It will be unavoidable.  But I’m not ready to actually create this website yet.  I might just create a free blog and post there for awhile until I figure out exactly what it is I want to do with this new direction I’m taking my blogging.  I’m going to learn from the mistakes I made on this blog, albeit 4 years later.  I’m going to market it better, have a bigger following, and create truly meaningful content.  Maybe I’ll even make some money from it.  That would be nice.  Because this website has made me nothing, even when I had ads on it, and I’m so anti-advertising that I would balk at even placing an ad in the corner.  I won’t make a dime without traffic, so that should be my main concern, and creating and delivering unique and valuable content.  Content that has high social value and high personal value.  I’ve often thought I mostly blog on here for myself and whoever might want to read it.  But perhaps I’ve been doing it all backwards.  I don’t know, but I sure as hell have a great example of a blog that hasn’t really blossomed the way I hoped it would and it is nice that this failure of a blog will be here for years to come.  It will be a good example of what not to do with a blog if you want to make money from it.

Here is a list of things I have done that I suggest nobody does if they want to build a successful, high traffic blog:

• Not having any central theme whatsoever
• Not posting with any regularity
• Creating content that you know is not your best
• Ranting and raving about the same thing for over a year
• Not knowing how to make your website have all the neat blogging gadgets
• Being afraid to offend anyone
• Taking all negative feedback seriously
• Writing about things most people aren’t ready to hear
• Not optimizing anything or marketing whatsoever
• Thinking that blogging will be easy
• I hope you get the general idea…

I know that some people like this blog, while most either don’t like it or don’t know about it.  I’ve received tons of feedback, most of it positive.  My next website will not allow comments.  Why?  Because I don’t want to spend my time moderating them.  I still like this blog, I’m just admitting that it isn’t successful.  And that’s okay.  I’m not willing to say that it has been 4 years wasted.  I have shown flashes of true brilliance on this blog and I can’t deny that.  I just didn’t always have brilliant posts and some of them were simply too similar to the previous posts and that is where I think I lost a lot of people.  But that’s fine.  I’m going to start fresh soon with a whole new blog and do my best to correct the mistakes I am aware of and try to find the mistakes I am still unaware of.  Just scan the archives to see what the progression of a long-term low traffic blog is, because I am a prime example.  At least I admit it and at least I am trying to learn from it.  My next blog will be at least a little better and I can move on from there.  Maybe by 2020 I’ll actually be earning money from a website, or maybe from a book I write.  Who knows?

If you found this post insightful, helpful, or thought-provoking, feel free to donate to my site.

Look what they did to the Native Americans.  They used to live in those longhouses, where multiple families from the same tribe inhabited the same space, possibly hundreds of humans living in the same space.  When we came to America, and saw their lifestyle, we were so repulsed that we had to break their spirits by kidnapping their children and having the authorities reprogram them that the way they were living was an abomination.  We couldn’t just leave them alone.  And now more than half their adult population are alcoholics.  They’re forced to live on the worst land in our entire nation on those reservations.  They had a nice community going and the Europeans came in and just took it away from them.  “Live like us or you’ll die.”  Kind of like the Crusades in respect to religion, except it was the whole lifestyle they took away from the former inhabitants of this land.

What’s so bad about living in the same space as other people?  How big does our personal space have to get before we feel comfortable?  This is a rhetorical question of course.  The answer is different for everyone.  In other cultures like Asian cultures, the whole family lives in the same house.  I used to have a friend who lived with his grandparents, parents, siblings, sibling’s spouses, and so on and so forth.  What’s so bad about that?  Seriously.  Why do people feel they need to have laws against that sort of environment?  I’m sure the people who live in homes like that have stronger immune systems and a better sense of themselves due to the in-depth support system.  I’m also thinking in terms of a Fight Cllub scenario, where all your friends sleep in bunk beds in the basement and you alternate shifts in making meals and whatnot.  Why can’t we all just live together?  Why does society say you can only live with your significant other and your children or maybe a roommate who you are close to?

I remember watching an episode of Family Guy where they had the Mexican Superheroes.  The landlord is in their apartment and there are like 50 people in the apartment.  The Mexican Superman is telling the landlord that they are just visitors, until the Mexican Batman comes back and says, “Hey, I just went to the locksmith and got like 50 keys, man!”  The landlord looks at the Mexican Batman and then the Superman says, “Shhh.  Don’t say that right now.”  This was all because there were only two names on the lease.  Myself, I would say that 50 people in a cramped apartment is too much, but the minute you put limits on that sort of thing, you alienate people.  Let these people choose for themselves who they want to live in space they are paying to occupy.  Has anyone ever heard the term, “Judge not?”

Why do you think we don’t want other cultures coming into our country?  Because we are so without any real culture that we’re afraid of any real one.  We’re said to be a melting pot, but the melting pot has become uniform after 225 or so years of melting.  You won’t find much difference between Americanized people.  Even second or third generation Americans are so entrenched in the “American way of life” that their original culture is nothing but a distant memory.  They want what the average American wants because they’re told that’s what they want.  The only thing they seem to keep is their food and sometimes their holidays.  Otherwise, they’re your ordinary white bread American citizen.

We seek fulfillment in material goods because we don’t feel a connection with other people anywhere near as much as we used to.  It starts at birth where we are taken from our mothers and put in a sterile room with other babies who are just as terrified as you are.  We are put in sterile bedrooms when we get home and discouraged from putting anything in our mouths.  Everything is kept clean and neat, so therefore we must get immunizations against different diseases that would most likely not be a problem if we were raised in an environment where there was at least some exposure.  Sure, maybe a few super plagues would wipe out part of the population once and awhile, but it would be far less than the ordinary diseases some people die of today because of a weak immune system.  Your immune system needs practice.  It needs germs to practice on.  The only time I wash my hands is when I take a shower or if they’re really dirty.  Otherwise, I feel that building my immune system is worth the slight uncleanliness of my body.

Antibacterial soap and other antibiotics have spawned superbugs that don’t respond to antibiotics at all.  It’s all because we are so afraid of germs that  we’ll kill them at any cost.  Even the good germs.  This is why I think we’re afraid of community.  Do you think people living in Mexico have stronger or weaker immune systems than us?  Just look at the average American going down there and drinking the water and getting sick.  The watch the Mexican drink the water with no problem.  The more we shelter ourselves from the world as it is, the worse we’ll fall when this civilization crashes.  And the more we shelter ourselves from other people and their terrible germs, the more likely we are to get sick and have no one to go to and live with if necessary.

Instead of having loyalty to community, we now have loyalty to corporations and banks that own our homes.  How many empty homes do you think are just sitting there with no one in them with a big “Bank Owned” sign on the lawn?  What are homes for anyway?  Are they there for banks to sit there and own them while thousands go homeless, or are they places for people to live?  If 20 people want to collaborate and buy a home, why shouldn’t they be able to?  They can get 10 bunk bed sets and just live there.  I know this isn’t for everyone, but when times get tougher, and we all know they will, what’s so bad about working together with an entire network of people?  It’s not only versatile, but also supportive in more ways than you can imagine.  It’s how we used to live.  We know it in our bones.

The Idea of “Property”

What is rent and mortgage anyway?  It is a river of wealth flowing from the poor or middle class to the rich.  And the bank or the landlord doesn’t really own the land.  The land is up for grabs.  I know some people value the  idea of property, but it has a fundamental flaw.  How can you own physical space?  Every inch of this world is now owned.  You can’t just go live somewhere and make your own shelter.  You have to own that land.  If the people that own that land don’t even use it, why should they care who is living on it?  You can be thrown in jail for trying to live in the woods.  Why aren’t the putting the animals in jail, too?  They’re occupying space on that land as well.  The only reason this land is able to be owned in the first place was through conquest and force.  We forced animals and other indigenous humans off this “property” and then sold it or said, “I own it.”  It was almost something for nothing.  All you had to do is spend time forcing whatever you didn’t like off that land and then claim it.  This is the root of all property.  So, if the root of all property is fundamentally flawed, why should anyone have to pay to occupy it?

I’m just trying to make a point here.  All these people that defaulted on their mortgages shouldn’t have to walk the streets homeless because the bank said so.  Find a place to build a shelter or live in a tent if you have to.  If you know someone you can move in with, do so.  Our idea that owning our own piece of land is outlandish, a domination mindspace.  “This is MY property.  I can do whatever I want with it.”  Ultimate freedom would be to say, “I’m going to live in this area.  I choose to live here.  No one can say anything to stop me as long as I don’t destroy it.  If I can maintain or enrich the land where I currently live, then I am allowed to stay there.  I am also allowed to invite as many people as I see fit to also live on this land with me, but they also must not destroy it.”  Is that so hard to accomplish?  Right now, I’d have to say yes, but I hope we can live like that someday.

I do my own thing up there on the stage and I am outside what anyone would expect. I am still working to perfect my craft and be able to go for more than 20 minutes at a time. One liners are hard to memorize. But I find it is easier to put them into little stories or relatable categories and just flow from there. I take Jerry Seinfeld’s advice to leave the audience gasping for breath…because of the laughter, or maybe the laughing gas. I truly feel more alive when I do that than any other time and time seems to stand still. Writing a joke and performing it is one of my greatest joys and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I believe you know it when you have found your passion. For me, it is unquestionable.

I study comedians religiously and I know what works and what doesn’t. I know the whole format. I understand what audiences are looking for. I can market myself to a certain crowd, one who has intelligence, humor, and a bit of sarcasm left in them. I know the value of laughter. It is worth more than any money I will ever make. But it would certainly be great to do what I love and make enough money to go around. I am setting this intention in stone, putting it on my wall or on my laptop’s screensaver and reviewing how I can get closer to it every day. My mission is now in motion.

I put this on hold for awhile as I dealt with a health problem I was having as a result of the brain tumor I suffered with five years ago. But I learned something in this experience. I can’t let anything hold me back. I can’t let anything, no matter how debilitating, obstruct my dreams. I have a unique story to tell, one from the eyes of a survivor, and one that bears repeating. And it is always better to tell a story with humor and possibly some exaggerations, purely for comic effect. Whether it be a white lie about my lactose intolerant milkman, or a funny story about how my Amish friend never calls me anymore, it is a fun ride worth enduring. And I invite you to take your passion into full gear this week as well. What other reason do you have for getting out of bed every morning? To get the daily news?

If you found this article helpful, insightful, or useful, please feel free to donate to my site.