Welcome new members

Hey there.

I'm 45, I used to write when I was a child, my first book I completed when I was 11, but it was lost to time. I had a difficult teenage life, and I used to write poetry to my girlfriends at the time. Very endearing. As I grew older, reality bit hard, and I had to work normal jobs to survive, and writing at the time seemed like an impossible endeavour to pursue, so I stopped writing and joined "the real world" as they say.

Well, 9/11 happened, and soon after, I lost my job. I sold everything I had and moved to Costa Rica with a group of friends and ended up partying like crazy and having the time of my life... until we ran out of money.

We met these dutch guys who taught us how to sell adult material online... which started my 15 years of fast cars, women, and debauchery of all sorts. Once I sobered up from that, I realized how much dating had changed, and was to change, as dating apps and online dating took over so fast. Completely changed society. That's when I had to write my first book about the experience, "City of Singles." It wasn't much of a success commercially, but it lead me to having my first child and first real relationship with a woman.

At that point, I quit the adult business and went into senior caregiving for disabled seniors, and an administrator role at a construction company. I loved the normal life of being a father to a toddler and working my cruddy 9-5, it was great. Well, COVID happened, and I wasn't about to trust the government with my health and a rushed "magic juice" when my neighbour at the time ended up needing surgery to remove part of his guts from taking the magic juice, so I refused it... lost my jobs and was pretty much on the verge of homelessness. So, I did what any respectable writer-at-heart does: I became an alcoholic and finished my 2nd novel, "The Shitkickers."

I learned how to print the books myself, and I did, and even glued them together and such, sold them outside of liquor stores in Kelowna in -14c weather, made just enough money to survive the winter until they removed the "magic juice" restrictions that wouldn't allow me to work a normal job. I think struggled to survive in the post-COVID world.

Well, here I am now, just released my 3rd book, "Black Eye Friday" but I find myself in a bit of a pickle. Because I was banned everywhere online for saying I will never take the "magic juice", I now have no way of actually reaching out to other Canadians. I'm basically like a ghost, I don't even exist. So, I'm trying to find places to show off my work and prove to the world that you can survive, despite every intention of this country trying to erase that I exist.

Definitely hard to survive in Canada when you don't conform and you never bought a home, I'm living in a shack at the side of the highway near Vernon, I have mice, a leaky roof, I go periods of time where I starve from a lack of food, and I need alcohol just to make it through the day sometimes, but I'm still alive and still writing. Hope I can find somewhere to share my work, but I'm pretty pessimistic with the state of Canada and how everything needs to be so woke just to get on the CBC.

Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk!
-J