Love and Fear - The Weekend Vigilante August 3, 2014

Hello from Anarchapulco,

Well, I fell off, or on, the wagon, alcohol-wise, depending on how you look at life just recently.  But I think after what I am about to write you may understand why I might want to have a drink from time to time or at least understand a bit more of what I am going through.  This is a long entry, by the way, I’ve been storing up a lot of this for a while so grab a coffee, tea, mineral water, scotch or whatever beverage suits you at the moment.

It has been three months since I announced that I was going to quit drinking entirely.  I lasted about 2.5 months.  During that time and afterwards I have had experiences that I am not sure I can adequately describe with words, but I’ll try.  What I am about to explain contains the highest levels of love and the lowest levels of fear and my current ponderings on how I want to deal with it all.

The first month was great.  I got to experience a whole raft of things that I had never experienced sober and I learned one major thing… drunken bar conversations when you are sober are painfully intolerable.  That was fine though, I just avoided going to bars for the most part and really enjoyed getting a fresh perspective on things.  It was a very introspective and interesting month.  Again, in retrospect, I think I have the kind of personality that enjoys to be constantly challenged or be excited about things or I start to fade.

And so, after the thrill of that started to wear off I began to really delve into reality.  I began to face it head on… and it was and isn’t easy.  I wasn’t a raging alcoholic before but had started to exhibit signs that alcohol was becoming more of a problem than a help to my life so I had cut it out.  What the last three months has shown me is the reality of why I am so unbelievably stressed out (although most people would probably never guess it from knowing me… I am very good at repressing my emotions or, keeping calm).

Allow me to go back to 2002… I had just gone through eight years of incredible stress, incredible highs and unbelievable lows during the tech bubble.  I went through two girlfriends during the process and one of my business partners jumped from the 8th story of a building in a suicide attempt during that time and the last I have heard of him is that he has gone quite insane and was living on the street.  It was one of those “what doesn’t kill you” type of events and I thought that it had made me stronger.  And, in fact, it did.  But what I now realize is that I never fully dealt with the emotions of the entire event (this is a recurring theme as you will see).  I told myself and told everyone I was fine.  But I wasn’t.

At the same time, I had it in my mind that I was going to try to sail around the world, get intimate with as many women as was humanly possible and although I never fully thought about it I think I essentially planned to drink myself to death.

Here’s the problem, 2008 rolled around and I was showing no signs of dying.  I had done things like sank my sailboat in El Salvador (that wasn’t on purpose though) and gone face-to-face with the Russian mob in Turkey.  They surrounded me and told me, “We are going to kill you.”

I laughed and said, “Go ahead.”

They didn’t!  In fact, they ended up befriending me and we had one of the wilder nights of my life.

In retrospect (and these are all the thoughts I’ve now been having) I don’t think I was fully committed to wanting to die.  And, secondly, what I found is that, in a certain respect, it is really hard to get killed or die!  I’d put myself in some of the most outrageous situations you can imagine and it’d always turn out like in Turkey… people would find my wonton disregard for death charming and take care of me in many instances! 

But it was in 2008 when the financial collapse began that I found a new purpose.  In between all my brushes with death and being in bars and strip clubs around the world I was constantly reading.  Mainly libertarian/anarchist philosophy and Austrian economics related material as well as researching events like 9/11.  And once you look into 9/11 and realize what happened you begin looking into other things.  The rabbit hole goes very, very deep and I am still digging.

But because of my Austrian economics learnings I had predicted the US housing collapse and knew that The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI), was near.  And I found it all incredibly interesting that hardly anyone knew what was really going on.  And, so, when the first shockwave of TEOTMSAWKI happened I felt passion to do something which I hadn’t felt in years… spread the message of what is really going on to as many people as possible.

I had just moved to Acapulco to have my first semi-solid home address in six years and had just met my wife-to-be and I decided to start The Dollar Vigilante… and I was passionate about it and still am… maybe even more now that so much has become clearer since 2008.  And, being the kind of person I am I just jumped into it really without thinking.

I still had the mindset of not really caring what happened or not and at that time I was a single bachelor living in a studio apartment on the beach in Acapulco (which is now AcaCondos)… and, I had it in my head that not only was I going to try to spread the truth about politics and economics to as many people as possible but I was going to take on what I saw as the evil in the world (the governments and central banks) head on, no holds barred, I don’t care if they kill me.  I suppose it was, as you say, a “purpose” I had found and with my personality I rushed into it no holds barred.

Then, life happened.

My daughter dropped into my lap on Christmas Day at three years old and asked if I was man enough to be her dad after her father had died in a car crash.  Who the hell is this?? My mind was blown.  And, who could say “no” to this little valiant angel?

Then my wife-to-be mentioned said she had a son and he lived in Germany and, by the way, he now lives with us too.  I’ll tell you more about him and my daughter later but one look in his eyes and at his spirit and soul and that was a done deal too.

Then one chihuahua, another chihuaha, an adopted cocker spaniel, a boxer and then a third abandoned chihuahua later and there were 9 beings, including myself, living in our house.  There would have been three cats we found in our garden too if I could have barely been able to breath with them anywhere near me.

Along the way I realized more and more that the woman I was with was the strongest, freest most amazing woman I had ever known and a marriage happened.

In between all that I spent most of 2009-2012 just neck deep in reading, researching and working.  As I stated above, I am passionate about what I am learning and what I am able to help others discover.  But, whatever that fatherly instinct is, it’s real, and I didn’t fully grasp the stress I felt having eight individuals who looked to me to make sure all went smoothly until just recently!

It was around 2013 when it started to dawn on me.  This is the fear part.  I was starting to become fairly well known as a government rabble-rouser and I hadn’t even thought about how much has changed in my life since I decided to devote myself to exposing its fraud.  I now have quite a large family but I am still pushing all the buttons that easily can find me one day as another bizarre car accident, heart attack or in Guantanamo Bay.

The research I continue delving into shows, time after time, people who have stood up to the beast are quickly vanquished.  Off the top of my head (and warning, none fully understood anarchy…), Martin Luther King (“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”), John Lennon…

Gandhi…

John F. Kennedy… and you know how I feel about politicians but he was the last President of the US who tried to stand up to the evil powers that control it.  On June 3, 1963 he gave “Executive Order 11110” which, for all intents and purposes, would have shuttered the Federal Reserve (we are now getting closer to who the real demons on this planet are).  Six months later and JFK was dead in what is still discussed to this day as being obviously not what the US government said it was.

Tupac Shakur…

Michael Jackson… this very anarchist style, anti-government video was never released…

If you missed it, here are a few of the lyrics:

Some of the lyrics in the song were offbase… and each of the people I have named weren’t perfect, at all… many of them had severe character flaws.  But the one thing that tied them together was bringing an awakening to the public to, at the very least, be very suspicious of the state and The Powers That Be (TBTB).

The further you look into it the further you realize that anyone who has really stood up to TPTB and been effective has been killed or imprisoned.

So, in my new found complete sobriety I started giving that some thought.  I have what is, by almost anyone’s expectations, a beautiful life. Beautiful, wonderous wife, kids, dogs, maids, drivers, private security, cooks and when not doing that I am travelling around the world, meeting amazing people and having amazing experiences.

I began to think, how far do I want to push this?  My initial plan was to take it as far as I could no matter if it killed me in the process but now I have so much to lose.  This is where a lot of the fear was really rooted.  I recently began drinking again although not to quite the same excesses as in the past but now I had clearly thought out what was causing me so much stress and it seemed even more stressful now.

Now comes the love part.

I then had three incredible experiences that rejuvenated me.

I have reconnected with my wife after a year of being very distant during this time and we’ve had many, many multi-hour conversations and I’ve told her all my feelings and I’ve asked her, what should I do?  Keep fighting on, push it to the limit or withdraw, enjoy what I have and quiet down.

Her answer: both, of course!  She told me that she knows who I am, knows what I am passionate about and she believes in it too and is with me no matter what.  And, she said, also take the time to enjoy what I do have… “You can do both,” she said, “And no matter what happens, we are strong and we will never back down.”

I said it before and I’ll say it again, she is the strongest woman I have ever met.

So, I took her advice and began to spend more time with her and my kids.

A few weeks ago I took nearly a whole day off (unheard of in the last four years) and just went to the beach with my son who is nine years old.  After some of the usual chit-chat about how amazing Minecraft is he looked up at me with his giant, pure brown eyes and said, “Papa, you need to think about what you want.”

I looked down at him, quite shocked at his mature, upfront statement.

“What is it you want most in your life?” he asked.

I was even more shocked.  What a deep question.  And what scared me and I feel a bit ashamed now is, I didn’t have an immediate answer.  I had been so turned inside out, stressed out, on-the-run for years that I didn’t even have a ready answer for that question.  I sat back, inhaled, then looked back down at him, trying to withhold some water that had formed in my eyelids.

He sat still and calm and then he continued on, “I know what is going on,” he said.

I still sat stunned… I didn’t know he knew anything was going on.

“I hear everything you say to Mama.”

My mind was racing… “I thought you were always watching video games or movies in your room?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “Whenever you and mama talk I turn it off and I listen,” he said.

“Don’t you know what is most important?” he continued, “What life is all about?”

At that point words don’t explain how I felt… flabergasted seems far too small of a word.  I continued to sit stunned.

“It’s the family,” he continued as though it was obvious.

He continued on while I sat like a student listening to a wise teacher, “I know what you are going through, we all do, but you need to understand your power will come from the family, you can’t do it all on your own.”

He still continued as I was now in full shock mode at what I was hearing, “Spend more time with us, connect more with us and you will find the power you need… and don’t worry, you will also give us the power to withstand anything as well.”

We then went for a walk on the beach as I stammered and stuttered along trying to process the conversation I just had and we talked like any typical father and son about crabs and fish and whether or not sharks are really bad or not.

And then, the finale.

I began to connect more with my wife and kids and we spent a wonderful week together and I was learning to both be passionate and work very hard while still taking time to be with my loved ones.  I was working in my office a few days ago and felt sleepy around 2pm.

Normally I would fight through it and keep working but I had a new outlook on life and decided that email can wait, work can wait, fighting the machine can wait a few hours.  I decided to listen to my body and take a siesta on the bed in my home office.

I don’t know about you but I’ve always found that daytime siesta naps and nighttime sleeping are totally different.  I often go into an incredibly deep sleep in the day and have some incredibly lucid dreams and this time was no different.

I had abizarre dream where I was totally drunk but knew I hadn’t had a drink at all.  I was stumbling, fumbling, tripping over things but thinking “why is this happening, I haven’t even had a drink”.  This went on for a while and I was in some sort of shopping mall or something and all of a sudden I stumbled and fell over a giant cliff but I managed to grab on with one hand to the ground while the rest of my body dangled off the cliff. I felt strong like I could hold on for some time but no one came to help me and I just couldn’t, with all my might pull myself back up.

It seemed like a long time, like 30 minutes in this situation and I knew I could keep hanging on for some time but also knew that I didn’t have the power to pull myself up either. It began getting to the point where I began to wonder if I shouldn’t just let go rather than keep expending the strength to hold on.

And then, I heard something. “Papa?”… “Papa?”… Was I awake, asleep or dreaming? It was my 7 year old daughter. She had woken me up from this dream/nightmare. It took me a while to regain my senses and I didn’t even fully realize what a powerful dream that was (due to my struggles with alcohol over the years) but I walked upstairs and she was playing in my bed happily and I told her about my dream and she looked at me with amazement as I recounted the dream and got to the end of the story and she said, with wild eyed amazement, “And, then what happened????”

I stammered for a moment and said…. “You saved me”.

“Aww papa,” she said, smiled, and kept playing.

I know there are people who look deeply into the meaning of dreams and there can be many interprations of what, if anything, that dream was all about.  But, given the last few weeks of a re-awakening of what I need to focus on more in my life, I took it as another sign that I need to re-connect with my family, have faith and trust in them that they are full, ready participants in whatever happens in the future due to my passion to fight what I see is wrong with the world and know that the true energy I need to carry on is my family.

So, I then went to lay in bed with my wife for my daily recharge of energy that I never even knew was right there all along, held her close and asked her, “Now that I have started drinking from time-to-time again, do you think I have a problem with alcohol?”

She told me, “No, you’ve had a problem with reality.  A few glasses of wine is fine,” she said.

So, that is where I am currently at. People who have had truly hardcore raging alcoholics in their lives will be shaking their heads and saying that I am just enabling myself.

But I have to follow my own instincts and for some reason a few glasses of wine in the evening can relieve stress and also open up alternative creative channels that for whatever reason are otherwise blocked.  Perhaps it calms that slight bit of fear that still remains as I face what I see as being a very large and powerful enemy.

My immediate plans are to get back into the gym and relax and spend time with the family for the remainder of this month with even a possible spiritual sojourn for a week if I can fit it in before getting re-focused, re-centered and rejuvenated fully again in September and continue fighting on.

After the last three months of deep thought, reflection and a renewed connection with my family, however, I now know I am not completely alone nor is my family unwilling participants in a battle that may yet to be waged to awaken humanity and create a better world against the evil thugs that lie cloaked in the shadows that may lead me down a path that has no completely clear end point.

You may think I am exaggerating or being overly dramatic but what is to come in the coming months and years will test us all.  Mark my words.  I’ll illuminate more on this topic starting Monday as I discuss what I think may be going on with this supposed ebola outbreak.

In the meantime I thank you for listening and hope you have taken something positive out of it for your own life… and enjoy what you have, even if you don’t even realize what you may have… as I did… and also get ready for an interesting few years ahead where we’ll all need to have our heads straightened on tight if we want to move humanity and consciousness on to the next, better level.

Join me in the comments section.