



Why?

A Love Affair with Decentralization.

Since coming to Japan in 2010, I have had five or six main jobs and about seven other, more minor, side jobs and gigs.

I had been studying "elementary education" in college, which turned out to be a massive joke more than anything, and had basically read myself out of believing in public schooling by the end of my stay there. I could either go rot there, in a shitty public school coercing kids into a lifetime of slow lobotomy, or escape. Of course I chose the latter.

And Liberty.





Yep. That's me sitting there on the steps looking bored as fuck. This photo is to prove that I was there when it all began. I'm an anarchist now, but Ron Paul definitely watered the love of liberty which was already present within me. When he didn't "win" the presidency--and if I am honest I think deep down I knew he wouldn't--I was pretty damn dejected and just kind of gave up on everything political. I vividly remember getting a text from one of my friends the night Obama did win, and becoming nauseated ad nauseum when I opened my phone to a text message proclaiming loudly: "GOBAMA!!!!!!!!" I felt like throwing a giant right hook that would connect firmly with my friend's facial features, crushing them into tiny pieces like my shattered dreams of "Ending the Fed" and also vomiting, at the same time.





Becoming an Anarchist.

Somehow, some way, after coming to Japan I ended up watching some of Stefan Molyneux's stuff. It was a video in which he was claiming that to support taxation is to support violence against your family and friends. I had been watching anarchist videos and toying with the ideas for a long time before that, but for some reason, when I understood what he was saying, it all split open. I got it. I had always been an anarchist. I had to travel over 8,000 miles away from home to find it out, but there it was.

I was also in the process of shedding my religious programming at the time, so the battle was being waged like a madman on every front. I remember at one crucial moment, sitting at a stoplight during this rather strange season of my life, with nobody around anywhere--no cars in sight--and realizing that the ONLY REASON I COULD NOT PROCEED was because somebody might try to stop me and take my money. Because a silly light was red and not green.

It all split open again. I was "not allowed" to use my own mind and reason to live MY LIFE --to manage MYSELF--but had to follow rules created by other people's minds, and if I didn't I would be fined, caged or killed. I couldn't use my own eyes and my own judgement to cross the intersection, but had to rely on shiny colored lights and people with pens and paper and guns who were not even fucking present at the scene. I felt like NEO. Eyes wide open and astonished at the level of bullshit I had been tolerating.

It wasn't long before I became an extremely vocal proponent of self-ownership, the NAP, and all things liberty.





Which Brings Me to Now.

Here I am, on Steemit at 3:24 AM, sitting on the Sea of Japan--jobless. Well, I have one small side job. It certainly isn't enough to support me or my family, but as always, I'm not worried, because I know I will make it happen. I feel, free. This Steemit thing is just taking off, and I wouldn't have had nearly as much time to devote to it had I still been dancing around in a children's school, talking about colors and cleaning up spilled juice. I love kids. I have gained great things from all my jobs, but I have never been satisfied and never felt at home, or in my element. But here, in the land of decentralization, blockchains, creatives and anarchists, I do.

So, why have I quit so many jobs?

Because they all have been, in some form or another, centralized forces which must, by default, place the individual in a position subordinate to the collective.

Because sometimes shit just doesn't work out, and that's okay.

Because while I realize that I love kids, and feel I am fucking excellent at connecting with them, it was just an energy drain that I could not keep up anymore.

But. You know what? Here's the real reason, and it's so simple and obvious that it hadn't even hit me until just now:

Because I just wasn't happy.





I have always tried to give 110% at my day job, all the while pulling midnights and not getting any real sleep--grinding hard to make music, movies, research and hone my activism skills, to write and create. Those are the things that truly "set my soul on fire," if I may use one of the most hackneyed clichés ever, but which rings true. When I am talking Bitcoin, when I am talking anarchism, when I am talking music, logic, love, laws, philosophy...LIFE, I am lit up like a Christmas tree.

Now, Steemit's got me lit up like a bonfire. Let's do it.