Welcome to the Bipolar Excellence Podcast episode 11. Can’t Afford To Attempt To Live My Dream Or True Purpose. Man. That’s a tough one. This is another episode in the Life Of An Outsider series. You’ll find the link to the series in the footer at my website, bipolarexcellence.com.

Not being able to afford to even kick off the dream and/or find your true purpose.

That dogged me for… man… I want to say decades because I’ve been on this journey of ending employee-ess since I was 27. And that was, I think in the year, 1997, when I, I had my second major epiphany, the first one was very dark and I’ll leave that for now. This was years later. And my second epiphany was:

I came home from a job. Oh my God. The story that, that backs this up, I had had a dream underway, fully planned out, thousands of dollars invested, two plane rides back and forth from New York to Denver. Company was involved helping me find my new career path. Interviews had been had. One home was sold. All my shit was packed up in a truck and on my drive 2000 miles west, I didn’t know it at the time, but the company that I was going to start my dream life with folded while I was on I-70.

It was a really good plan. And it blew up somewhere so far away, I couldn’t hear it. And when I got to Denver, they said, don’t even call, just get set up. I hadn’t even found somewhere to live. I winged it. I got an apartment in the foothills, overlooking the plains and the city of Denver. One of the most, probably the most beautiful place I ever lived, the best view I ever had in a condo.

And I got all set up, all moved in and called them and found out you have no job. There isn’t even a company. So now I’m in a panic. My wife is still working in Manhattan, my wife at the time. And she’s due to fly out… I don’t remember anymore… in a week or two to join me after she wraps up her work in Manhattan. And everything just, just blew up.

It’s just all all went away. So I was scrambling. I took a job in the heating and cooling business for some grimy little independent company, run by a guy with highly questionable ethics and morals. And as I started doing that job for what I was qualified to do.

This guy, he had an entire appliance division that quit cause they hated him so bad.

And I go into work one day and find out I’m handed the work of seven men to do something I haven’t even done before in my life. And he’s like, well, if you want a paycheck, you’ll figure it the fuck out. And I figured it the fuck out. And it was one of the most stressful times of my life. And it was appliance installations in people’s homes.

You’re kind of getting the idea how grim of a situation I was in. And I come home one day in the company truck. I worked with a lot of sheet metal. My hands were always lacerated, bleeding and hurting, and I stood, I parked the truck on a, on a little thingamajigger that overlooked the whole city. Beautiful day. Beautiful view.

And I realized I should have been really happy to be there. A great day. And all I was was miserable. And I said to myself, I cannot continue life in this fashion. I can’t keep working for people. I’ve always hated it always. But now it’s becoming something I can taste. This the worst it’s ever been, and I need a way out.

That that led to being drawn in the Amway, which is whole other insanely dark tale, full of wonder and destruction and hurt feelings and tens of thousands of lost dollars. It’s truly epic. But that’s how I kicked off trying to live my dream and find my true purpose. Had the epiphany, joined Amway, I started having 20 other jobs in about a two and a half year period.

I had 20 some odd different jobs I tried. Cause back then it was Denver was a place where you could do that. I couldn’t afford anything. Let alone Amway. Amway robbed me of about, I no longer remember, 20 or 40 grand. Lost when everything was said and done. But it was exciting and I was making a run at it.

So there’s a key lesson for you: even if it’s wrong, make a run at it. You’ll learn something good from it. And I did. So now I’m dead broke and bipolar kicked in and I’m going mad from it. Bipolar hit me hard. So. My world is disintegrating. I’m just running through jobs. None of them are right. And I can’t even afford my bills, let alone to live my dream.

Well, a dream cropped up in the middle of there. There was another job, another fantastic tale. There’s no time to tell it here, but myself, former Marine war vet, and another guy, ex army special forces. Same age. We were, you know, we’re both in our twenties. We both hated work. We both were dreamers.

We wanted to build something that was ours. That became basically an exposition. We did a metaphysical and holistic health fair. What do we call that thing? The Ascension Celebration. It was awesome really. It worked! And that became a, a nine month process from nothing to a three, a three day weekend at the, I forget, Denver Expo Center, something. It was north of the city.

And we had thousands of visitors, and we made thousands of dollars. The dream disintegrated, even as it succeeded because my partner, he had just as many problems as me, they just had a different flavor to them. We were two very damaged people. But who were good friends and both had a dream. It blew up. It just integrated right before our eyes on both our parts.

But the show worked and we profited something like 10 grand when it was all said and done. Now I’m even more fully broke than it was before this started, because 10 grand went poof for many reasons. And then my marriage disintegrated and I came home at this point, the sickest I’d ever been with bipolar.

So eventually I come out of bipolar. How’s that for a segue? And I still have that bug. I don’t want to go back to work for anybody. And so now I’m starting to do all these other things. Now, at this point, I can go on and on because there were dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of things I attempted to do, mostly online, but a large bit happened in real life.

All I can tell you is I kept moving. Everything I tried to do either failed or wasn’t even real. But I got better at spotting what wasn’t real. Somehow I always found money. Usually it was with credit cards. Sometimes I’d work a little here or there and make the money. Or I’d do a trade with somebody or barter services for, for entry into something else.

And it was something else I now remember about me. There was a handful of things that cost a lot of money to take part in that I got… what do you want to call it? Sponsored in. People really dug having me around and they would float the cash to have me in. Cause they just wanted me at their side.

That happened to me a number of times. And for you as a bipolar person yourself, you might want to see if, is that you as well? Or something like it? Because that’s a key thing to know about yourself. You don’t have any money, but you have something that people want. So back to attempting to live my dream and be unable, being unable to afford it.

I told you all of these things, because as I’ve said before, keep moving. Just keep trying, keep talking to people, keep researching, attempt a few dollars of a move here or there. Wiggle your way into something else here or there. Piggyback off of someone else’s ride wherever possible. Make yourself useful to people above you or doing better than you as they build their dream.

Maybe you put your dream on hold and you do like an internship, and I’ve done these, where you go work with someone who’s very successful and just be their go-to person for whatever it is they need that falls within your skillsets. And then kill yourself to increase your skillsets. You’re going to learn how to make these things happen.

You’re going to develop an energy around you that people see you’re for real and you’re going for something. And they’re going to continue to assist you. I’m sorry to tell you that for the most part, the money’s never going to show up. It will here and there.

And some of you probably are not going to be as completely obliterated by bipolar the way I was. So you might be actually able to find the money that you need, but if you’re listening to this, you probably can’t. So make yourself useful in other ways to people who can help you.

There’s a chance that’s not going to lead to anything directly, but you will learn and you will learn and you will learn. And if you handle yourself well, you will be remembered and you will be called back years later by some of these people.

One way or the other, if you keep moving and keep making yourself valuable to the right people, something good will happen for it. That’s what led me to where I am now. I can’t even clearly chart how my life kept getting better, while other parts of it were a complete disaster.

I never had money to do anything I want. And yet I kept finding more money. Craigslist was a big help, hint, hint. And even as I lost other sources of money, somehow I always, I just kept moving. And I kept talking to people and I kept sharing my dream.

And I kept talking to other dreamers. You want to find your peer group, find out who the other people are that are like you. Be careful there because you can also end up commiserating instead of working together.

I did that once for a while. I did that for awhile with a few different times. But I remember once the first time I caught it, a guy I was really close to, another former Marine, he had done stuff like they make movies about. Real, like Navy Seal, Navy Seal type stuff in the Marines. He was part of a unit I’d never even heard of. I had to look it up and very small, doing unbelievable, unbelievably, dangerous, violent things out in the world for America. He was one of those guys.

He was even in worst shape mentally than I was, but he had a lot of energy and we had a lot of laughs and he was a really good guy at heart. But we would sit around and bitch in a parking lot after different things, because we would be, we were part of a larger group, in which everyone else but us had money to do things. We could never afford to take part in the way that they did. So we just made ourselves useful.

Then this guy and myself would sit around and complain about our sorrowful situation. And one day I caught myself doing it. And I had to clip that guy out on my life. I hated it. But I realized he was too deep in it and he wasn’t changing. And I couldn’t change him. And I had to walk away from that relationship, even though I didn’t want to just so I could develop a healthier outlook on my own.

Everything I just shared with you led me to tripping over and falling into, either the money I needed, the career moves I needed, or the people I needed that could help move my mission forward.

It’s it’s… I wish I had better news for you. If you’re good with money, you wouldn’t be listening to this episode. Make yourself useful and find the right people to make yourself useful to, so that you enjoy it. And you’ll learn whatever you need and get the support you need, at a lot of times when you don’t even expect it, to keep your vision moving forward. That’s how I got to where I am now.

I’m nowhere near where I want to be career wise yet, but I keep closing in on it. More of my bills get paid, more of this empire online gets built. Teach yourself more skills. You’re going to have to learn how to do a lot of things on your own.

If you can’t do it on your own. There’s places like Fiverr and oDesk, if that’s still a thing, where you can pay someone a few dollars to just move the needle forward a little bit on something you really are not good at doing.

If you can find the money to pay for just, just that, a boom to just speed things over, over a certain hump that might be holding up the whole plan, so that you can do the parts of the plan that you’re best at.

That was my dream forever. I want my own guy. I’ve been quote unquote, the guy in more contexts than I can even remember. And when it comes to all this stuff that I do online in particular, I am my guy. And I couldn’t stand it. It gets very stressful at times. You have no choice as you fail repeatedly, as you learn different things about running a website and all the things connected to it online.

You’re going to screw up. You’re going to lose the little bit of money that you could afford. It’s going to suck, but you just keep going. You just keep going. And I finally reached a point to here to where, here and there, I can hire guys. I can hire girls.

There’s a, the, there’s a lady who put my podcast cover together and she’s done other podcast covers for me. And I looked for her online only to find out she only lived like an hour and a half north of me. I’ve never met her. Don’t plan to. But real nice person. And she was my guy for podcast art. It was a dream come true just to pay someone else, to make something come out as nice a way as possible in a fashion that I never could.

So I’ll leave you with that. Keep driving onward, take the lumps, take the hits, deal with your personal embarrassment and shame when you really, really, really screw up. Move through the painful parts when you lose money you never should have, and just find a way of doing it better next time. Ultimately, if you get any kind of good at this, you can bring me on board and we can speed the whole thing up.

If I can’t do the thing for you, I know who the people are that you can connect to that will. And I am eager to do it for you and with you. You can find out more about that on bipolarexcellence.com. Figure out if you want to work with me, you’ll see what to do on that site. And with that. I wish you to be well and just again, keep driving.

There’s nothing to do, but keep fucking driving. Don’t give up no matter what. Alright guys? Alright. See ya!