I've made my riches by buying foreclosed houses from poor people and reselling them at a major profit. It's not right that people lose their homes, but if someone is going to make money off it, it might as well be me.
I started the blog solely to help keep track of information for myself. I abandoned it for several months when I first left downtown San Diego and went to the north county. I even posted a "Goodbye" post. Then, weirdly, even without updates or any promotion whatsoever, it was getting organic traffic. I discovered this because of the occasional few cents here and there showing up on my Adsense account from the site.
Since the major city and the county have the same name and I was still in the county, I decided to make it a countywide resource to the best of my ability.
It is shockingly hard for a homeless person to find the information they need online. I have had a college class on how to do online search and sometimes have difficulty finding things online so I can get an address and phone number even when I know for a fact they exist.
Most websites for homeless service providers are not intended to be client facing. They are intended to impress potential donors. They typically do a poor job of telling needy individuals what they need to know.
So, there is demand for the info. I assure you, I am not getting rich off of it. One of my Achilles heels is that I like being helpful. So, although this is, sadly, one of the most successful projects I have ever had in terms of traffic and being taken seriously as a valuable resource and making a difference in the world, it has put damn little money in my pocket.
Further, I find it galling that a homeless individual is being criticized for trying to monetize their expertise in the topic. Most of the time, I get this shitty attitude that admitting to being homeless online amounts to me trying to panhandle people. So, in other words, I am homeless, I am not allowed to merit an earned income. I am only allowed to hope for charity and ingratiate myself for crumbs. No matter how I get my money, it is inherently immoral.
And people wonder why my financial problems are proving to be so stubborn, as well as why I have such strong feelings that the wrongly convicted individual we are discussing should be allowed to pursue an income that doesn't involve making a spectacle of his misfortune.
But, this is HN so...I guess it's to be expected.
(And I say "sadly" it is one of my most successful projects in part because homelessness is on the rise nationwide. The general rise in homelessness is part of why there is demand for the info. In my case, "getting rich" would mean what? Getting off the street? How dare I aspire to such self indulgence and selfishness when there are poorer homeless people than I.)
I don't disagree. But it seems to me that if you're trying to generate revenue quickly, you ticket the people who are most likely to pay quickly.
Why would they write more tickets on a population that doesn't respond to them (context: according to TFA some already have fines for "missed court dates" etc)?
If you want to generate revenue, wouldn't you go hard on writing tickets in a middle-class neighborhood, where the population makes enough money to pay the fines but not enough to have the time/resources to fight?
Michael Wood, an ex-marine and ex-Baltimore Police Sgt explained this.... the logic goes that if you were to stop random people in a middle/upper-middle class neighborhood, it's significantly more likely you were to grab the son or daughter of your judge or your doctor.[0]
[0] please Google the name - information is readily available, but the links are too politically charged for this particular discussion.
Wait, so you know you will work after retirement. You get personal enjoyment out of your work. But you don't know what your work will be?
It sounds like you're saying that you want to continue existing and being able to do things after you retire... That is exactly what retirement is. Why do you feel like you need to sound like one of those "go-getting", "I'm-always-working" people who thinks everyone should work 22 hours a day?
Realize that the only person in the world who cares about your frustrations is you. If you can't handle your shit, people won't want to be around you. You need to make it your personal responsibility to be a good team player. It should help you to realize that all of your amazing skills and talent aren't worth anything if no one can stand being around you.
Everyone has their own specific set of strengths and weaknesses.
It's toxic to compare people's weaknesses to your own strengths, or to compare your own weaknesses with other's strengths.
Enjoy connecting to people and making banter. Stop trying to get "somewhere". Don't even try to push for the project to finish earlier. It finishes when it finishes. The quality it's done at is the quality it's going to be. Do what you're going to do then step back. Focus on the present, and enjoy it because it is everything you have. The only "somewhere" everyone ever gets to is death. What's more important, your joy in the present, or some illusion of the future?
Choices are illusory. Our lives are not ours to control. We can follow the flow of life's river and enjoy the sights life offers, or push against the current, and encounter resistance, spending all our time bucketing water out of our boats. The only choice we have is between focusing on reality of the present, the small boons we experience every day, a smile, an eye contact, a joke, listening to a story, and focusing on the illusions of the future, finding weaknesses in yourself or others through comparison, fighting against the current of life. Who are you in this moment?
I agree with 9935c101ab17a66's [dead] post: your comment contains some good advice, but it's diluted with garbage and platitudes beyond all utility.
Choices are illusory? Nope. Life is an endless, continuous stream of choices, and making those choices is the only thing that you can do to influence how your own life goes.
I'm not going to convince you, but in my experience I find it to be true. The more I am focused on the present, the more the choices I do pick appear to be the obviously good ones. The other choices merely clouds my life, like the OP, trying to pushing things through faster, experiencing gridlock, and then getting labelled as toxic. If we know that's what the consequence of a choice is like, it'd be obvious not to pick it, none of it is enjoyable. It so happens these obviously bad choices in hindsight all happen to be picked when I am too attached to some future outcome, and all the good choices I do make, I was not attached to the future, I made them by being immersed as the present, picking the obviously good choice.
By good choice I mean one I would never regret no matter what the outcome was, and instead would have regretted if I never made it.
That's what I mean by choices being merely an illusion. All I can pick is the present, or the illusion of being in control of the future.
