Creative Life- 2/12/2024

Would you sleep on this mattress, not knowing who had slept there before?  This is what "transitional housing" looks like.  Imagine a 100 year old hotel building, on the outskirts of downtown L.A., and the whole building matches this mattress.  Everything is run down.  The toilet didn't flush either.  I was supposed to live here for several months, eating the pig slop they called food, with no functional toilet, for the CHANCE of getting a "permanent" (aka 2 year lease) apartment subsidized.  There was a wet, black substance, possibly black mold, growing on the wide window sill.  I picked the other mattress, about half as bad.  I was out at 6:30 the next morning, even though I knew there were several days of rain coming.  The "programs" all of you hear about for the homeless, are for the drug addicts and lazy fuckers who never want to work again.  The system is creating government sponsored drug addicts that your tax dollars (and inflation) pay the living expenses for.  There are at least 7 or 8 million of these people across the U.S. that you're paying for already.  There are plenty of those people.  But I'm not one of them.  There are no programs (other than food stamps (Cal Fresh) for people actually trying to work and earn a living again.  See this post for more info on that.

Just to be clear, my goal is to start a small business selling ebooks, real books, a few T-shirts, and my Sharpie art.  I want to use the proceeds from this business to rent a room or apartment, buy a BMX cruiser, start riding again to the level I can, and start slowly losing weight.  That's the goal.  That's always been the goal, since I landed back out on the streets of SoCal in the summer of 2019.  

The main reason a "real job" is out of the question is that, after living in North Carolina for ten years (2008-2018), where I couldn't find ANY job (except taxi driving for a year), I have no work history.  The last "real job" I had that could verify my employment would be a warehouse I worked at in 1997, where I tested computer monitors, drove a forklift, and loaded trucks.  Every job I've had since, taxi driving and "real jobs," the companies have all gone out of business, or been bought out and no longer exist.  I'm 57, really overweight, and can't do any physical jobs at this point.  But there's a lot I can do online.  

At this point, I have a better chance of creating a small business of writing and art, than I have of getting a real job that pays enough to rent a place to live.  I also used to be a part time flipper, buying storage unit auction units, and selling the stuff for cash.  That's a good way to make some money, week to week.  With a vehicle and a place to store stuff, I could do that as well.  That would combine well with the online business idea.  I always made some money doing that, I did it part time when I drove a taxi in 2004-2007.  So that's the goal, create my own job, rent a place to live, and stabilize my life again.  Then get a bike.  That's all I've been trying to do for nearly 5 years now.  

It's hard trying to build a business right off of the streets.  Really hard.  But that's the only realistic option right now.  And we're heading into a major recession (don't believe the media hype, we're in a recession, financial YouTube is talking about it daily).  I've built online stores twice since 2019, and both times my inability to get a legit bank account held me back.  I didn't realize something that simple would be such an issue.  But when you can't show proof of a physical address, it's an issue.  And no, a P.O. Box won't work.  

Anyhow, here's the last 3 1/2 months worth of drama.  At the end of November, I signed back up for food stamps (aka Cal Fresh), mine had expired at the end October.  I got approved for six months, like usual.  They had the first month on my card the next day.  Cool.  Then I got a free "Obama phone," because I couldn't scrape up enough money to buy a Trac phone, after mine got stolen last summer.

My food stamps didn't come in December, so I figured what I got at the end of November was for December, instead of back-timed for November.  Then they didn't come in January.  I called them in January.  The woman said the money would be on my card in three days.  It didn't come.  So I called again, that woman said they owed me for December and January, and it would all be on my card the next day.  It didn't come again.  As of now, for reasons no one can explain, I haven't had my food stamps payments for December, January, or February.  I'm in the system, it says so on the computer.  But they won't send the payments to my card, for some reason.  If I don't qualify, just say so, and I'll figure something else out.  But their online system says I should be getting the payments, and I'm not getting them, I'm in the system.

I also had a prepaid bank card thing, which allowed me to transfer money out of Paypal, and similar sources, so I could get paid for doing artwork, or other work online.  That card got shut down, no reason given, in December as well.  Then, since I've been following crypto for a couple of years now, I signed up for a Coinbase account.  I know the crypto major bull market is in its early stages, and will play out over the next 12 -18 months.  So I was planning to scrape up $50 or $100, and put it in Bitcoin, Eth, and a couple others, and just let it ride for the next year, as the cycle plays out.  I couldn't fund the account, my "Obama phone" wasn't accepted.  Then, a couple of days later, the new Google account I opened, to have a separate email for the crypto account, got shut down for no reason, as well.  That's the third Google account I've had shut down with no notice, with no reason given.  

With no food stamps in January, I struggled to scrape up food money.  Normal people are pretty generous to homeless people from Thanksgiving to Christmas.  Then the generosity just shuts off.  January is always the hardest month to scrape through.  I was going through my days, and not eating much.  I actually "work" much of every day, though I have to bounce from location to location to do it.  Other than the library, I have to pay, I have to buy something, at most of the locations I work at daily, like fast food joints, Starbucks and similar locations, etc.  Buying a drink or food gives me access to heat or A/C, a place to sit, power (sometimes) wifi, and a bathroom.  So I have to buy something to use those places, and I need bus fare to get from place to place.  That's just everyday life in my situation.  

Because I wasn't eating much, and not eating well, my immune system got depressed.  I got sick in the middle of January, and went to the hospital for three days.  I had some infection that normally I could fight off.  My lack of decent food, and battling the chilly weather, wore me down.  I had some infection, and it landed in my lower left leg, a form of cellulitis.  I've been prone to that since I was a taxi driver in 2007.  When I was leaving the hospital, it took half a day for them to find my belongings, that I had to leave with security in the E.R., when I checked in. When they found my stuff, My sleeping bag and blanket were gone.  The hospital either lost them, or threw them away.  That's a bummer.

From the hospital I got sent to a "homeless rehab" place up in Palmdale.  The people working there were all cool, the food was decent, but luke warm or cold.   But the place was completely underfunded for the services they are supposed to provide.  They had problems getting me my antibiotics three times a day the first few days.  I could barely walk when I got there, and just laid in my little bed, with my leg elevated on my backpack.  I healed up, mostly.  But now my left leg swells up with fluid each day, then the fluid drains at night.  It's still improving over time.  It was back to pretty much normal size this morning.

I talked to the social workers about looking into "housing" after a few days in the rehab place.  Then I didn't see them again.  My social worker went ahead and signed me up for the housing system, at the beginning of February, and I was taken to the sketchy-ass building in downtown L.A., with the nasty mattress in the photo above, and no working toilet for my room.  So I left.

Then I had to deal with a couple of 38 to 40 degree (F) nights, the first with no sleeping bag.  Luckily, a person I know in this area gave me a sleeping bag the second day.  That was a life saver.  It's good down to about 45 or 50 degrees, so I want to buy a moving blanket for additional warmth at night.  Those are compact, and are good insulation for their size.  I squeaked through the huge rainstorm, 7.25 to 8.25 inches of rain in about four days, where I'm at.  One night, I set down my big, trash bag wrapped sketch pad, to put on my poncho, when leaving a business.  I spaced out, and left my sketchpad there.  It had the finished "Regrets" drawing (below), a large doodle art (black and white) drawing, and a couple smaller things.  Not a huge loss, but still a bummer.  So I have to buy a new sketch pad before I can do any more drawings.  Another thing on the list.

Then last night, while I was sleeping, some motherfucker stole my shopping bag, which was tucked behind my legs while I slept.  All my clothes were in it, and about 15 razors, since I have to buy a 20-pack of razors to get one, these days.  So I have the clothes on my back, my laptop, Obama phone, and Sharpies and my basic art supplies.  I have the new sleeping bag.  And that's it.  

I want to be perfectly clear, I'm NOT asking, or hinting that I need help.  I'm just writing this post to explain how fucked up life can be, to vent, and to let everyone know the kinds of things I deal with, and don't write about most of the time.  This is why I scrape by, and haven't been able to get back on my feet.  When you're homeless, things you need, everyday items, are getting lost or stolen, on a regular basis.  These setbacks can take months to recover from.  

It's a beautiful, but chilly morning here in The Valley, north of L.A..  I've been here in a fast food place for over an hour, and it's still only 52 degrees (F) out right now.  It's been a crazy winter, and I'm doing my best to survive, and keep plugging away at the overall goal of getting a functioning business going, and making a living again some day.  But it's been a crazy winter, I have a bunch of stuff to replace, and I can't even do artwork right now.  But I keep plugging away at it.  

So that's my status right now, as a creative guy working to earn a legit living again.  Again, I'm not asking for help or any items.  I'm just writing about the things I normally don't write about, and letting everyone who follows my work know how things are going.  Thanks for reading, thanks to all who have bought drawings from me, helped me out in some other way, or support me on Patreon (I can't access that $$ right now either, but will be able to soon).  More stuff to come.  I'll try to keep it interesting, most of the time.  

Both legs were swollen at this point, even my hands were.  But the left lower leg was more swollen.  This is the morning after I got to the homeless recuperation place in Palmdale, after three days in the hospital, in mid January.  

"Regrets."  This is the #sharpiescribblestyle drawing that was in the big sketchpad that I left in a restaurant.  It wasn't there when I checked a day later.  Nobody wanted to buy this one, but technically, it's one of my better drawings.  I wanted to do something weird for Halloween, try another idea, and this was the result.  I hope whomever nabbed it likes it.   

I've been doing a lot of writing on Substack lately, check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

 

Creative Life 10/19/2019

 I'm making progress.  I landed in Hollywood on Sunday, September 8th, with a large day pack full of my stuff, mostly art supplies, a bright yellow shopping bag with my clothes and other stuff, and 81 cents in my pocket.  That's it.  I couldn't find a place to sell my Sharpie artwork, on day to day level, in Orange County, after my Paypal account got mysteriously frozen.  I thought of other places, Venice Beach seemed like a possiblity, but you need a permit there.  I went to the First Thursday Art Walk in Laguna Beach last month, and got good feedback from people, but no sales.  I thought maybe downtown's L.A.'s art district would work, but it seems pretty spread out, and there's no official art walk there. 

I was homeless, scraping by, and needed a place where I could just set up where there was some foot traffic, and actually sell a little bit of my artwork, at least to buy food while I worked on the other ideas I have.  It was tough, I lost about 12 pounds the first week, because I just couldn't afford to eat much.  (Starving Artist Diet book coming soon?) I struggled on, trying to sell some artwork, and find the basic things I need to operate day to day.

In six weeks, starting with that 81 cents, two bags, and a shitload of determination (the only thing I have huge quantities if these days), I've managed to get my California driver's license, a P.O. Box, a small storage unit, and got my Paypal account opened back up so I can use it.  To most people, those things might not seem like a big deal.  I needed a mailing address (and physical one) to get my driver's license, which makes the P.O. Box necessary.  To do much of anything, I need an I.D. of some sort, my NC license was thrashed, and had expired while I was trying to get things going again.  Since selling my Sharpie art is my main source of income right now, and most is sold outside this area  (until I build my rep here), I need a way to actually receive money, I don't have a traditional bank account right now.  So I had to get Payal unfrozen, and part of proving to them that I was really me, involved my ID.  So I needed these basic things to get the other basic things. 

A huge part of the progress I've made is due to Sven from Norway, and old school BMXer and now Facebook friend, selling my art in Norway and elsewhere in Europe.  Thank you Sven!  He says my blog got him stoked to get back riding again after an injury, and he's gone above and beyond to sell copies of my drawings over there.  So thank you for that, hope the Norwegians and old schoolers of Europe keep digging my drawings for a while, and the old schoolers here get to see my stuff and some of them like it. 

Meanwhile, I weighed about 310 when I got up here, and was carrying 30-35 pounds of stuff, everywhere I went.  That just sucks so hard, it's hard to explain how lame that is.  So with a tiny (but fucking expensive) storage unit, I could put the stuff I don't need in the course of the day in a safe place.  So that's huge as well.  So I've managed to get all these accomplished in six weeks, again starting with 81 cents.  So I'm REALLY stoked.  I CAN WORK NOW.  After being held down for 18 years, all I want to do is create cool shit and work my ass off (figuratively and literally).

That's me, in the photo above, a couple of weeks ago, at the place on Hollywood Boulevard, near Highland, where I set up and sell a little bit of my artwork on the street.  It's actually about 100 feet from where I sold my very first Sharpie scribble style drawing for $5, while homeless, in 2008.  that was a picture of an grey alien that said "Illegal Alien."  Hollywood & Highland is a crazy, chaotic place where tourists from around the world look for the stars of famous actors and musicians, up-and-coming actors dress in costumes of characters and take photos for tips with tourists, musicians, dancers and other street performers vie for the attention, and money, of those same tourists, and the place is famous worldwide.  In the middle of all that chaos, local shopkeepers sell pizza, donuts, souvenirs, bus tours, and all kinds of other stuff, all while random homeless people and full blown crackheads wander around as well. Hollywood may be more weird than Venice Beach these days.

I've spent most of my life avoiding places like Hollywood & Highland, but it turned out to be one of the few places I could walk up, put some art out, and try to sell it.  Hollywood is one of the creativity capitals of the world, and they're pretty friendly to creative people.  The initial reason I came back to California turned out to be a job beyond my abilities, at least without a huge ad agency-sized budget.  So I headed to Orange County, where I lived nearly the whole stretch from 1987 to 2008, to try build my life back up with my art and other work.  I know Orange County well, I have lots of old friends there (I'm not calling all of you old... well, yes I am, we're all in our 40's or 50's now, heh, heh).  It seemed the best place to reboot my life.  I spent nearly ten years in North Carolina, which simply has an anti-creative culture by and large.  There are little pockets of really cool, creative people, but not enough creative infrastructure for me to build a life, or make a good living there.  I just don't fit in The South, it's a world unto itself.

There's one thing I need I want to be really clear about.  I didn't just wake up one day and say, "Hey, I don't really want to work anymore, I think I'll just have fun and become a Sharpie artist."  I couldn't find a good paying "real job" in North Carolina.  In fact, over ten years, I couldn't find any job in North Carolina, except as a taxi driver for a year, and that didn't pay.  I became a taxi driver in California in 1999, after I left a good paying lighting tech job because of an injury.  Taxi driving began to die in 2003, due to new technology, and I struggled for years, then wound up homeless.  Ultimately, that led to my family flying me to North Carolina, where they all ended up living.  They thought I'd be able to start over there. It turned out to be just the opposite.

After my dad's death in 2012, I moved in with my mom, which is an incredibly toxic environment, with lots of good food.  So I got really depressed and got really fat (again).  But I also applied for about 140 jobs, mostly low wage, entry level jobs, in the area where I was.  Of all those, I got one call back, from a fast food place, and they didn't hire me.  I'm a good worker, but I don't fit the mold in NC, and there are dozens, sometimes even hundreds, of people vying for every job there.  You have to know somebody to even get a shitty job there, and I didn't know anybody who was hiring people. 

So after a couple years of not hearing back about jobs I applied for, struggling with depression, and driving my mom around all the time to stores and doctor's appointments, I realized I needed to create my own job.  The Californian in me was up for that challenge.  The North Carolinians I knew thought I was an idiot, they don't think like that.  The only thing I did that made me any money, was drawing kid's names in my Sharpie scribble style, for $20 a drawing, once in a while.  So I decided to step up my art game, draw something that was really worth paying for, learn to promote it online, and go all in on selling my Sharpie art.

I started with some art supplies, a $65 refurbished laptop, an internet connection, and not a single dime to my name.  Living with my mom, I couldn't hang on to any money, she needed every dime. She has this super power where she can create a crisis that requires the exact amount of money you have. That's part of the fun of living with her.  So I, quite literally, started without a dime to my name. 

Since then, I've done over 100 drawings, sold over 80 originals, most of which took me a week to draw.  I've sold about 40 or 50 copies of drawings as well.  On one hand, that's awesome.  Not many people in this world have sold over 80 major pieces of art in four years, let along after starting with nothing.  On the other hand, since I started with nothing, I've scraped by, drawing by drawing, and been homeless most of that time, since I never had a chunk of money to actually "start my business," like most small businesses do.  When you're homeless, no one takes you seriously, it doesn't matter what skills you have, what personal tragedy may have happened to you, you just get lumped in with the crackhead sleeping on the bus bench down the street.  You're "just another lazy bum,"  no matter your skills, talents, abilities, or drive.  So I've had to struggle through this just fuckin' insane series of  adventures to try and get to a point where people took me seriously as a guy who makes, and sells, pretty cool artwork.

Four years in, I'm just now, finally, getting to the starting point of building a business.  A lot of people have helped me out in many ways, by buying my work, or helping me sell it, or giving me a bit help or money now and then, to help me simply survive that day, and keep going.  Thanks to all of you.  I can't send you all a really cool gift, not yet, but I really want that day to come.  It's still a day to day struggle for me, I still sleep outside nearly every night, and it's still a day to day struggle.  But things are looking up, and in the past couple of weeks in particular, the tide seems to be turning in my favor.  So that's where I'm at right now.  

Creative Life - 3/30/2019

43.  It started as some little inside joke thing among the Curbs Dogs bike/skate posse in 1986 in San Francisco.  It quickly spread to the rest of the Golden Gate Park BMX freestyle and skate scene.  33 years later, for me, it's kind of a little good luck thing when it pops up randomly.  Today started off pretty cool.  I kind of got off track much of the day, wandering half aimless a bit, but I did get some more writing done on the latest project.  I also found a couple of used books in the sale at the library, and for once, I could afford them.

One turned out to suck.  I tossed it at a bus stop.  It was called Tailspin by Steven Brill.  It's whiny, intellectual bullshit by a guy who thinks today's entrepreneurs "just got too good" for the good of society at large, as did other groups.  Waaaaaah.  No, entrepreneurs never get too good, too many things can go wrong at any time, and their reign can end quick, and they know that. Entrepreneurs continually progress and get better, so people who don't progress get left behind.  What that really means is that millions of people just need to step up their game.  That's all. Don't bother reading that book.

The other book, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, by Chris Anderson (former editor at Wired) is a great read.  It's old, by today's fast-paced tech standards, it's from 2012.  It's all about the Maker's Movement, another D.I.Y. movement in this world, sparked in about 2005, and exploding since.  I've read Chris Anderson's previous books, The Long Tail, and Free, and both completely changed my way of thinking about business in today's world.  I think every business owner needs to read both, make that all three, of these books.

My last drawing, the second Maya Angelou drawing, is now living in Southern California, and waiting to be framed.  I started focusing on my Sharpie art to try and begin to make a living again back in late 2015.  t's become clear that, while I can actually sell drawings consistently, I can't sell them, yet, for enough to put a roof back over my head.  I've learned a lot in my three years as a working artist, but now I'm going to back off on how much I draw, and focus on some more profitable ideas to get myself back on track financially.

A little idea a couple of weeks ago has grown, and been the foundation of other ideas to use some of my other creative skills to work in a different way.  More on that soon.  I'll still doing drawings if anyone wants one, it will just take quite a bit longer, because I'm going to be spending a lot of my time working in other areas that have a better chance of helping me earn a real living- SOON- again. 

So that's it for now.  Thanks for reading.  Now go do something cool.