Honest in a World That Rewards Dishonesty

The Lottery Nobody Talks About

So let me tell you something that is true. You are often forced to choose between being successful and being happy, and if you choose being happy you might end up in your 40s poor and homeless. But here is the thing, and I am just going to be honest: you could sacrifice everything in your twenties and still end up poor, so it is a real lottery unless you have real connections. That is the truth nobody wants to tell you. I meet people who sacrifice their twenties all the time and by the time they are 40 they have nothing, they own nothing, because they did not have connections. So essentially, if we are going to be honest, there is a group of people that decides who wins and who does not in life, and unless you are part of them you are not going to win. That is the honest to God truth. It is very difficult for small businesses to win. I meet so many people who started businesses in their twenties, sacrificed everything, and ended up with nothing. So being that the chance of failing without connections is like 90%, you might as well just go have fun. Or you can go to college, impress your professors, try to get into grad school, and maybe then your chances of success are like 60% and your chances of failing like 30%, depending on what you go to grad school for.

Go to Graduate School, But Choose Wisely

So I highly suggest that if you are in college you go to graduate school, but once again it depends on your major. Unfortunately, due to artificial intelligence, many art programs are closing around this country. My stepbrother went to college for digital art, could not find a job, and now works as a promoter for rappers.

Apparently he makes more money and gets laid.

Who would have figured? He is not exactly attractive and he is only about 5 feet tall, but somehow it all worked out.

My Route Through Organized Crime Adjacent Circles

I come from a different route. In my twenties I was around people in organized crime. Not street people, mind you. Yes, briefly I was around that when I was a teenager, but I got away from those people pretty quickly. I mean, who wants to hang out with low-level prostitutes and crackheads anyway?

As I got older I started going to nightclubs and raves and I met people involved in high-level organized crime, basically selling drugs and offering prostitution services to wealthy people. At one point I was offered some opportunities in that world but I turned them down because I decided it was not the life for me.

I decided to go to college instead. In my twenties I finished community college and then transferred to a university. I went to UC Davis and studied computer science. I was proud of myself.

The Escort Who Laughed at My Degree

At one point there was an escort I knew from my 20s who was part of a syndicate connected in Hollywood, though at the top it was heavily controlled by a group of men. The women had to pay heavily into it in order to access the top clientele. She almost ended up working with some celebrities but it fell through. She asked me at one point how she could get out of it. She was tired of it. She was tired of not making it to the top of her network despite working her way up to a leadership position. I told her she should go to college like me. She asked how long it would take and I said probably 10 years between community college and university. She asked how much she would make and I said probably $60,000 a year after 10 years. She asked how many hours and I said probably 50 to 60 hours a week. She laughed at me. She said she currently makes $100,000 a year working approximately 10 hours a week. I remember thinking to myself that she would eventually get older and would not be able to do that kind of work anymore, and I thought I was doing the right thing by going to college.

The Degree, the Crash, and the Minivan

I graduated in my early 30s and initially there were a ton of job offers. I turned some of them down, but then very quickly the economy went down, all those jobs disappeared right after COVID, and I found myself without work. I found myself going to coding bootcamps, competing for jobs with other developers. It was like the Hunger Games for computer science. I remember feeling heavily demoralized. I remember applying for thousands of jobs, getting phone calls, being told they were interested in hiring me, and then just getting ghosted. I remember going through five different interview processes thinking I was going to get a job, only to end up living in a minivan and struggling. It is hard out there, not just a little hard, very hard. I started thinking about my friends in organized crime. I do not talk to them anymore, but it is hard not to compare myself to them. I know one of them got caught and had all of his property seized, his mansion included. Maybe he did not pay off the right person, or maybe with digital technology it is just harder to maintain that lifestyle anymore.

None of these people ever committed an act of violence that I am aware of. They considered themselves businesspeople and for the most part they behaved like upper-class people, but what they were involved in had a really dark side. There is a reason why I did not choose that lifestyle and I am glad for it. I just wish making it legitimately was easier in this society.

Rejection PTSD Is a Real Thing

I got hired as a petition circulator recently and after a couple of days of constant rejections and only gathering a handful of signatures I just stopped showing up. I think I have rejection PTSD at this point. I legitimately think that is a real thing. Over the last four years since I graduated college I have been rejected so much that I think I am traumatized by it. I think I am literally broken from it.

I am not going to go into organized crime.

Friends Who Steal and a Girl Who Wanted to Go Full Criminal

I know I am not a criminal and I do not want to be one, but it is sad that even some of my legitimate friends are stealing now just to get by, shoplifting from Whole Foods and places like that. I tell them they should not do that and they look at me and say, “Dude, you live in a van. Stop giving me advice.”

What does it say about a society when theft and criminal behavior just become part of survival?

I broke up with a girl recently because she wanted to go into crime. She was an IT worker who just could not make it. She said that sexism and the economy made it impossible for her to keep a job. She said to me that we should go into crime, start stealing from people, go into that lifestyle. She was an extremely beautiful Asian woman, and in her mind I was homeless and she was doing me a favor. In my mind I think she had played too much GTA. I told her she was out of her mind. I said a petite, beautiful Asian woman in her late 20s was just going to end up getting shot. I told her she had played too many video games.

I ended things with her.

It was not worth it. The drama was not worth it. She told me she was going to buy a gun and commit crimes.

I told her I could not be involved with someone like that, that I have a clean record, that I chose a clean life, and that I could not let someone like that bring me down when I had spent my entire adult life trying to stay out of jail.

She thinks she is so smart because she is a computer hacker. She thinks she can outwit anybody. I think she has another thing coming. I hope she stays safe. I have not spoken to her in a while. I cannot be involved with someone like that.

But still, it is hard to break up with someone because she chose a life of crime. To have so many friends right now who are stealing just to get by, I just cannot handle it anymore. I keep living an honest life. I do not steal. I use food stamps. I am respectful to people. I play by the rules because I want to be a good person, but this is really hard.

What the Van Taught Me About Society

Since living in a van I have met teenage girls who are prostituting themselves on the streets and tell me they make more money than their parents. I look at them and think that is so messed up, that in this society people have to do that just to get by. I tell them to stay in a shelter and they say it is terrible and that they can find an older man to stay with instead of being in some bad shelter.

And I just get depressed. What kind of society do we live in where people have to do this kind of thing just to survive?

Why I Chose the Honest Life and Why It Has Cost Me

I psychologically cannot handle this anymore. One of the reasons I chose an honest life is that I was in foster care as a teenager, placed there alongside the son of a New York mobster and a number of former teenage prostitutes because it was a coed facility. When I got out I said to myself that I was never ending up in that life and I was never becoming a criminal. But throughout my adult years I keep meeting people who chose that life, and there is always a temptation, and I always say no. I am going to be an honest person. I promised myself that.

So many people I have met who break the rules live a better life than I do, even if they eventually go to jail for it. I cannot handle being an honest person in a world where dishonesty wins, but I do not believe that giving into the darkness is how you achieve victory. I believe that is simply how you enjoy defeat.

The Difference Between an Activist and a Criminal

Recently I have come to believe that if you are going to break the rules it had better be for other people, not for yourself like a criminal. I was involved in the Occupy movement in my twenties. That is probably the happiest I have ever been. We took over bank-owned properties and vacant land and made them available for everyone, not just ourselves. Technically we were breaking the law, but I saw us as superheroes, like Robin Hood, because we gave to the poor and tried to be virtuous. I do not believe in burning things down. I do not believe in killing people. I am not willing to go there. Furthermore, when we burn things down we cannot reuse them for others.

I do believe that communities need to start seizing unused corporate property and turning it into low-income housing. For instance, in Oakland there was a large factory that was turned into a cooperative called the Vulcan Co-op. People filled it up, made small apartments inside, and they were happy. Yes, it is okay to break the rules, but you cannot do it for yourself and you cannot do it to be a criminal. You have to do it for the good of everyone else. That is the difference between an activist and a criminal: one breaks the rules for everyone else, the other breaks the rules for themselves. I am not willing to choose that selfish life and you should not either.

A Rant to Survive the Dystopia

I am tired of rejection from the legitimate world. I am tired of all the applications I turn in going unanswered. I applied to every temp agency I could think of this week and no one has responded. It is bad out there. I used to get responses from temp agencies and now I am not. I do not know what is going on. My gas costs are too high and I am not eating enough and every day I feel more defeated by the system. But eventually we have to rise up and change this because salvation is not coming for us. We have to make it for ourselves. But do not be a criminal. Do not steal. And if you are going to reclaim land for God’s sake do it as a community, not as an individual, because individuals who steal are criminals while communities who repurpose unused land have collective authority behind them.

Anyway, that is all I have to say. I needed to get this out. I needed to do this for myself today. I do not do drugs and I do not drink, but sometimes I rant in order to survive psychologically in this dystopia we are making.