I want to be an unstoppabl einfluence. I want to help others while learning and growing myself -- ideally, I'd like to make enough money to pay my bills while doing it. That's not something that's impossible, it's just not something I believe I could have achieved had I continued to feel trapped and oppressed in a traditional work setting. 

“Can’t” weighs on us and if we aren’t careful it can sink us like an anchor sitting on our chest.

But with this business, I CAN.

As I look out upon the horizon of another twelve months, I wish for myself that I remember to say, "Fuck the haters." May I only take time for the Yay-Sayers and remember that I can't take worry to the bank, so I need not worry about what others think of me / my business / my story.

For a long time I accepted my meager earnings as "part of the deal." In exchange for the opportunity to do life-changing, world-changing work I had to suck it up and make less money.  After some years, though, acceptance turned into deep resentment and I stopped dreaming, stopped looking to the future. I was just trying to survive, and just barely doing so.

I invested in my business days before Thanksgiving in 2016. I haven't looked back since.

There was a period in early June, before my doctor and I got the Gabapentin to levels that made a significant impact in which everything is a blur and I lost chunks of whole days because my brain dissociated. Pain that intense creates a sort of mental prison that the sufferer can get trapped and lost in. At least that was the case for me. There were times when I was home alone or at night when I needed to be sleeping and the pain was so intense and sustained such high levels that I would be crying and wishing for escape, thinking, "If this is what life is going to feel like long term, I don't want to live."

I was lucky because I never had to be alone for very long.