My Current Situation

The last time I entered a blog post here, I was down in Dallas Texas, and I was kind of stuck there as a result of financial problems. I had not yet managed to make it down to Italy, TX in order to visit with the folks at the Monolithic factory.

Since that time, I have managed to take the Greyhound bus to Waxahachie, TX, from which I took a cab ride to that factory, where I met with a person named Gary Clark. The meeting failed to produce the results for which I was hoping, but Gary was a nice guy, and he paid for one night's stay at a motel there, so that I wouldn't end up even more broke than I already was, and so that I would not end up having to sleep outside that night. He also gave me $200 so that I'd have money with which to partially purchase a bus ticket back to Bellingham, WA. I still had to wait until my next direct deposit payment of unemployment insurance into my Chase account before I'd have the rest of what I'd need for that return trip on Greyhound, which is why I had to stop over in Dallas instead of buying a ticket directly from Waxahachie to Bellingham, but fortunately, by the time I'd returned to Dallas, that payment to my Chase account had been made.

Of course, the return trip was almost as tiring as the trip down there had been, and once I found myself in Bellingham, I still faced housing problems comparable to the one which had sent me on that trip to Texas in the first place. Everett Barton, the Bellingham resident with whom I'd been staying earlier, was no longer in his house, so staying with him was no longer an option, so I ended up having to move into the Lighthouse Mission, a homeless shelter on Holly Street in downtown Bellingham. My first night there would be a blog post in itself, and while my second night there wasn't quite as bad, it's clear to me that my priority list has got to include addressing the financial situation quickly so that I can move into a more normal place of abode. Suffice it to say that it was a long walk to the Lighthouse Mission, during which I ended up urinating on myself because most places with public restrooms were closed; and I spent the evening listening to the guy sleeping on the mat next to mine as he vomited on himself two or three times. Not my idea of fun, and probably not yours, either! But I survived.

The trip to Texas was costly for me in some respects. I ended up having to pawn my laptop PC just so that I'd have a little money while in the Dallas area. I am hoping to be able to quickly earn enough money to pay off that loan in its entirety, and to pay the pawn shop to ship the laptop PC back to me in Washington. If I can't raise that money, I will very likely lose the data I had on that laptop PC, since I had so little advance notice about the need for the money from the pawn shop that I wasn't able to use the normal procedures in order to back up that data prior to putting it into the pawn shop. (They basically hold one's product hostage when using it as a means of assuring that the loan will be repaid, so they can't give one the loan money and then let one temporarily use that product in order to back up the data or go online.) It wouldn't be a big deal if I didn't care about the data files on that computer, but I do, because I was hoping to sell prints made from those graphic files in order to raise additional needed funds. The data means more to me than the computer or the software on it. Both of those things can be easily replaced (albeit at some expense), but the original data files are another matter.

Well, that ought to give a brief overview of my current situation, although it doesn't cover the entire story by any means.


I used the show facilities this morning at the nearest YMCA, and I'm feeling a bit fresher now. I'm basically trying to think clearly about what my next steps should be. Among other things, I plan to go back to the offices of the Opportunity Council in order to assure them that I still want to remain on their waiting list for housing. I've been on that list since last February, and I'm hoping it won't be much longer before my wait will pay off. I also hope to speak with someone there about my intentions of tapping into the funds Starbucks donated to the Opportunity Finance Network, in order to start my own business here. I'm not relying solely on that plan in terms of income; I still need employment, obviously, and working as a bell ringer for the Salvation Army may be very useful in that respect, so that I can earn the money with which to pay off that pawnshop, and also so that I can pay the December storage fee at Sunset Storage, so that I will not lose those items. (Staying at the Lighthouse Mission would be a lot more stressful without the ability to store some of my personal possessions at Sunset Storage.) I also plan to use computers available at the library and at Job Source in order to engage in an intense search for a job.

The experience has been an ordeal to put it mildly, but I really have no choice but to try my best to survive and even thrive through the experience.

More information to come...

Please pray for me.