Computer is back, less procrastination

I do not believe it. The harder I work, the luckier I get. On September the 24, I moved into this building. Yes, you have it right. I am typing from this building.





As I was saying, I moved into the Marshall House. I had been in the T House for months. I was telling my neighbor this yesterday. My confidence was low, at best. I had no job. I was in a new place. My money was low, so low that if I were to grab it, I would reach my shoes. lol.





Eric Richardson let me write a couple of times on his blog and I was hooked. I had to continue to write. I knew there was this computer on the second floor. I slept incredibly well the first night here. I live on the third floor. I walked to the second floor and got on the computer. The first thing I did was find a recovery chat room. I figured I could develop some friendships, people with whom I could talk. I was leaving my little "Physical" support network. I was concerned about that. Joining the Chat room let me establish a "virtual" support network.



I longed to blog and chronical my navigation back to life. I wondered how to do it. I met Garza the week before I moved in. However he was hard to catch at that time. I wanted to get started so I did some research on this computer and I found blogomonster. It was about 5AM, on September 25 when I began my blogging career. Of course, did not know what to talk about.

I was writing for therapy mostly. I wanted to establish something. I know I had been writing for years on legal pads. Wrote in jail and wrote in the facility to which I was court ordered. In essence, I had been blogging to myself for years.



September 25, was the first day I published. I must have posted three or four blogs a day. When I look back at the posts, I still see one view, then 3 views, then 7 views, then the view

count jumps up to 20. Wow, twenty hits. Did not matter to me if the hits came in a day or if it was the aggregate of a couple of weeks. I had twenty people on my site. Did not matter if they lasted a second or and hour. I would have been crushed if I knew they were only on it for a second.



I was making my adjustments to my new living arrangements when the computer became inoperable. Doomsday was on. I was ruined, I thought. No more blogging. No more communicating. No more therapy. No more getting my voice out there.



The counselors at the T House were worried about me. The all but had to push me out of there when it was time for me to leave. I was afraid of the world. I was scared of the world after everything that had happened and yet I was in Brazil at 18, on my own before I landed in Philadelphia.



The counselors had not heard from me in a week. They did not know what to think. I had not been back to the building. The reason was I was here, blogging. I was learning how to blog.

Sometimes I would write for an hour and the computer would cut off. I was so frustrated but I would type it all over again. That happened many times but I was determined not to be defeated. It happened again, a few minutes ago. However, blogger has an auto save feature, so if the computer crashes, everything is saved.



I went back to the facility after the computer, here at the Marshall House broke down. The counselors were glad to see me. You see, within a few days of weeks of leaving the place, many people relapse. I remember them saying the same thing when they were talking about britney spears. People spend so much money on these programs and relapse within 24 hours.



I continued my blogging at the facility. I would use a computer after 12 o'clock. I would use the computers at Chrysalis before noon. I would get that at 8 in the morning. Two days after I moved in here I had to attebd "job" classes. They are a part of the program in order for you to receive county benefits. Most people get a doctor's excuse in order to be excused from it but I chose not to do that.



I had to attend classes at Chrysalis in order to use their resources as well. I started there one week before I was to move out of the T House. So for the past 6 or 7 weeks I have been attending some kind of class. Oh yes, I also had to start Money Management classes, once a week. They were classes sponsored by SRO Housing. I hated all of these classes. Much of the information was so remedial, at best. I learned to loved the classes. More on that later.



I used the Central Library, Chrysalis and T House computers for every blog after the first week.

After a couple of weeks, I made a decision to change to Blogger. It was part a marketing decision. It was partly because I posted a picture on an experimental blog one night. I was at the Ballyntine Apartment in Skid Row within the first week after I moved out. They have a computer lab there. The veterans are housed at the Ballyntine within the VOA organization.

They are housed at the Southern within the SRO Housing organization. I knew none of this before I moved out of the T House. I lived in the THouse for 7 months and knew nothing about Skid Row. It took me 6 months before I began to piece together pieces of information about Skid Row. It takes time. Information concerning Skid Row is a huge maze. You have to understand how people think, speak, their motivations and everything else to get the basic information about persons, places and things.



I used the computers every morning before I had to get on a bus to attend a class.

I never missed a day of blogging. Blogging and classes. I even attended a press conference and a lecture by the Mayor. I started asking questions. I was seeing more. Understanding more.



I even secured a job offer within the SRO Housing organization only to have it rescinded because of a hernia. I understand why. I do not blame them. It is not important that it was rescinded. It is important that I moved forward. It is important that I still aim to be one of many ambassador's of Skid Row while I am down here as I told Sue I would be if I worked for SRO Housing. (I was going to experience something new today. I was going to use the Little Tokyo Library computers. I heard there was a library around here. I found it yesterday. I reserved a computer. I have never reserved a computer the whole time down here. Hmmmmm.



I am beginning to plan and discipline myself further. More on that later. I just canceled my computer reservation at the library from here so someone else could use it. )



I put out resumes and feelers for things in the last month.



All of a sudden the classes were over with the county. The orientation and classes at Chrsaylis

were paying off already, not in the form of a job but in the form of allowing me to utilize their resources, and their computer. George, my employment specialist, would talk but more as a morale booster and supporter than to help me secure a job. He and I have things in common. We both are interested in literature and video production and broadcasting.



I forgot got to tell you that I also took Job classes at the T House. So, in total all, I took three different remedial or novice classes about interviewing. They were invaluable. More on that in my next blog.



I told Ed Fuentes I wanted to work out some kinks. I am beginning to do that. I want to keep the title, Scribeskidrow but I want to sign the posts, Walter Melton. I am shedding the self tainted, low self perception of being associated with Skid Row. I noticed on my dashboard, it said Walter Melton. I changed it a few days ago but now it shows. I need to talk to Don about how to have my name displayed each time I post. He has been on my case about it anyway.



I learned about some basics. I spent so much time at the T House lab posting pictures and stuff. Now my time is opening up and I am slowing putting together a system. I am beginning to put resumes out there. I am not counting on one thing. I have opened up several doors and potential is building.



Last night, I told you pushed myself to go back to the T House to publish those pictures. I stayed there and studied google anaytics and e marketing.



Oh yes, I forgot to mention that I put 3 videos on youtube. The first two are terrible but the last one was not as terrible. I could not use audio but I explained on this blog that the video was so people could see that people on Skid Row were were learning new things.

I was learning how to get around the obstacle of what I couldnt do and what I did not know how to do to accomplish a goal. BLOCK BUILDING.



Don and I put on a web cam. Jose wants me to interview with the LA Times. I purchased some Domain names. I read where the company Oversee.net purchases domain names. Hmmm. I did not tell you I was interested in them from the beginning. I punched in something about Downtown Internet Marketing companies. Their name came up. This was about three or 4 months ago. I would think about them when I was in the guard shack studying. I also liked them because their address was 515 flower. 515 , May 15, is my birthdate. I figured I would have good luck with them. But first, I would prepare myself to increase my odds of success. I would learn more about the e world. I was learning everyday. I learned about redfin.com on 60 Minutes. I first saw my friend Jose on Sixty Minutes around the same time I saw the Red Fin segment.

I did not know he was the Deputy City Attorney that walked Anderson Cooper around Skid Row. That was the first news segment that I critiqued for hours. I had been studying
Broadcast News Handbook By Associated Press. I had these dreams of being a news correspondent, etc. Funny, now I am blogging and Jose, who was on 60 minutes is a friend of mine.

Then this morning, I was laying on my bed. I was trying to figure out a way to become more efficient. I realized things were happening. I have told you that. More importantly, my attitude is changing by the second. Gone with the "Doom Gloom" , in with the "Make it true, I can do".

I got up at 5 and straightened up a bit. I was going to go out and purchase coffee but decided not to do that. I decided to wait. Why purchase coffee. I have coffee here. Purchasing coffee is 60 cents. Why spend it. Tighten up. More importantly, walking around to purchase coffee is just another form of procrastination. I would delay the things that need to be done. One always needs to get deeper into oneself. That is he HIGHEST form of progress. You do that and everything will follow. Deal with the silence. Handle it. Get comfortable with it like I bot comfortable with not getting hi. Learn from that. I did it when I finally stopped smoking cocaine. Then from what I learned from that, I quit smoking cigarettes, cold turkey.

Do the same with procrastination. Very subtle. Very insidious but it was there. You waste time and opportunity.

I had been copying volumes of stuff on the net since the beginning of the summer. They were materials to read and study. I never studied them at the T house. However I started assembling them. I made copies at the T HOuse and at Chrysalis. Every day I would copy something to add to my curriculum.

As you know I have been reading and studying. Well, finally I started putting all of that in a huge notebook. I have had the material and the notebook. I was not ready emotionally to do it. I still was comfortable with drag coefficient being high. I was more comfortable having stuff to still do than stuff that I got done to get where I had to go. However that changed somewhere during the last few weeks. Because I started putting out resumes. More on that later. I had to prepare for Don when he returns. I am making lots of progress with people. I am planting seeds even though I could not feel it.

I plowed through some more "invisible stuff by organizing my curriculum. I do not have to hunt for sheets to read. I do not have to see so much clutter. I can begin to go right to it. I DEALT WITH THE SILENCE.

Then I walked down here on the second floor and the computer was on and functioning. I can use it to blog. I can use it to continue my research and hunt for companies anytime of the day and night. All of that ground work, going from place to place, from computer to computer, trying to research companies, learn stuff, read stuff, publish stuff paid off. Now I am escalating the momentum. I worked hard and now I am lucky. I said I was on a new level. Now I really understand what I have done. I am mastering myself. I am making possibilities endless now.

I am back where my blogging started, on the second floor of the Marshall House. Got to go.
I am going to put in a load of clothes to get that out of the way. I want to further create my system of management so I can make a quantum leap this week. I feel it. I want to taste it.


Good morning world, I love you