I knew it was pretty chilly when I poked my head out of my blankets in my tent this morning. I got to McDonald's, and looked up the temperature on the local news website. "18 degrees, feels like 8 degrees," it said. Yeah... pretty chilly. All the NC locals here in McD's are complaining about the cold. They all slept in nice warm houses last night. Camp fires are not an option where I'm camped out. Lots of blankets have to suffice.
My main focus these days is turning my art and writing into a viable business. Why don't I "just get a job?" Haven't been able to find one in North Carolina since I drove a taxi over five years ago. If you read the article linked in that last post, you know that I'm not alone. After three serious attempts at job hunting a couple years back, 150 online applications turned up one response, at a fast food place. When I met the manager, she saw my overweight, middle-aged self, and changed her mind.
Here in central North Carolina, the only directive people give is "just keep looking for a job." But the Californian in me, the entrepreneurial side, realizes there are other options. I decided to create my own job. I started in November 2015 with an old, battered laptop running Windows XP, some art supplies, ambition, and not a dime to my name. I was living for free with my mom, but it was far from an ideal environment. Two weeks into my attempts to sell artwork, my computer died. I sold a couple of drawings to buy another cheap, refurbished laptop. I managed to sell my unique Sharpie marker drawings cheap, but on a halfway consistent basis, ever since. Even now, I average only $2 to $4 an hour for the work I do. Not much, but it's something.
But where I was living was an apartment in continual financial crisis. So I was never able to re-invest the little bit of money I made. My mom and I didn't get along when I was young, and we still don't. Long story, lots of back story, but the end result is that I came back to Winston-Salem from Kernersville with about $20 a couple of weeks ago. I choose to live in a tent rather than go to a homeless shelter for a few reasons. 1) I have a laptop that I use to blog and sell my artwork. It WOULD get stolen or destroyed at a shelter. 100% chance, no question. 2) No bed bugs in my tent. 3) I can work as much as I want, which is every waking hour. I love what I do, and get up psyched to get to work. I don't have to go to bed a 9 pm and have to wake up at 5:30 am for no reason, like I would in a shelter. 4) Shelters suck. 50-60-70 guys snoring, yelling, talking shit, and stealing your socks (and anything else they can nab). 5) Homeless shelters ARE NOT geared to help people actually trying to get back to work. They are geared to funnel you into programs for either mental health or addiction (whether those apply to you or not), and then scamming Social Security disability to get a check from the government. There are no entrepreneurial homeless shelters. But there should be.
Last night, I left the library, planning to buy a ten-ride bus pass at the station. I had less than $20 in my checking account, so I couldn't pull cash out. The only store nearby wouldn't let me get $5 cash back on a purchase. But I had I gift card from Christmas I planned to buy the bus pass with, because I had no cash or change for the bus. But the machines only take cash. I went to the window, and couldn't buy a bus pass there either, I needed cash.
Since I have some community service to do, and need to stay out of trouble, I chose not to panhandle a dollar for the bus. Instead, I walked the 3-4 miles from the bus station to my campsite. Walking under a bridge near Baptist Hospital, I saw a guy in the shadows walking towards me. I noticed him put his right hand in his pocket and appear to pull something out. After years of taxi driving and homelessness, my radar went off. As we got close to each other, he opened his arms up wide and said "Merry Christmas, man!" And tried to give me a big hug. It was December 27th. Christmas is over. I didn't recognize the guy. He was a black guy, late 20's maybe, a skinny dude. I had to literally put my hand on his chest and firmly, but not aggressively, push him away. "I don't do hugs, man," I told him. His expression changed. Whatever he had in mind, he realized he had picked the wrong guy. He stepped away and we continued going our different directions. He acted like it was a mistake, and I didn't press the issue or get aggressive. That's the way to handle a mugger, I guess. I weighed about twice what he did, and there was concrete in every direction. If it had turned into a pushing and shoving match, he would have wound up in the hospital, and I might have, too. Or jail. But we both treated it like a simple misunderstanding, and that was that. After about 20 feet, I looked back. He put his right hand back in his pocket, apparently putting whatever it was back in his coat pocket. I shuffled on "home," and spent an hour under my covers trying to warm up. I've never been mugged before. I wasn't last night either. Life goes on. I've got drawings to do.
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