JediWright.com

These last few weeks have been some of the most intense I think I’ve yet experienced. Not like I haven’t been through some bad spells before or anything but this latest round has been really drilling and consistent.

From having had to freeze my DF salary, to filing for unemployment, to continuing to adjust to parenthood, to having to cut my health insurance out, then Tristan’s, to filing for medicaid for her and Lee (which still isn’t sorted out, so he’s still without coverage), to wrangling with two startups, to enrolling back into school (with ITT Tech for computer network systems) with full tuition covered but no way to start due to a complete lack of income.

In addition, I had some issues with communication between family and friends that added to everything else, really put me close a breaking point I’ve not recalled reaching before.

Thankfully, things started turning around a little this past weekend with the arrival of a reimbursement check from my canceled Blue Cross policy, confirmation on the start of my U.I. from California and most significantly, the long overdue activation of my solar web hosting service at SolarHoster.com. Granted, it’s still a far cry from what I envision it to be, but at least I can start hosting sites.

Meanwhile, Tristan and I have continued our discussions over what we’re doing concerning our living situation. She doesn’t want to stay here in PA and wants to move back to Ohio to have the support of her old friends and family there. Admittedly, it’s not a bad idea as it’s much cheaper there, she’ll be more grounded (in theory) with her friends, family and hometown, and we are exploring discussions of renting a house with her best girlfriend, Amanda.

We’ve submitted a rental app on one house so far and are waiting to hear back from the landlord. If that goes through, we’ll probably be moving around April 15th.

What this means for Rivertribe, my other startup exploration happening here in PA, is uncertain. Though it’s uncertain anyway as I’m having a hard time getting movement from my friend with the equipment that would allow startup of operations. This is actually kind of okay with me anyway, as I had only wanted to explore the possibility of starting Rivertribe up. Then I asked another friend to go in on it and things started getting out of control and I failed to manage things properly.

So as I should have learned from before, don’t do business with friends. Period. But if you insist on doing so, be very explicit about every little detail from the get go. Otherwise, things can get twisted fast. Which they have done to some degree in this instance, which is unfortunate, but not surprising considering where my life’s been these last few weeks.

Concerning startups and partners in general, I’d venture to say in some ways business mirrors people’s ways and gives greater clarity into the type of person you are. So maybe business together with friends is not such a bad thing, cause it helps cut away to the truth of things that you might not have otherwise seen before.

Anyway, my real priorities are certainly obvious now regardless having lost my salary. All else gets put on hold when you’ve got to find immediate income. It’s tough times to be job hunting though, especially when you don’t even own your own car and are sharing your partners. And more so in my case since I moved us to a rural setting without any public transit. Doh.

Thankfully, one of my LA contacts recently offered up a freelance gig with his company Ijhana. Hopefully things pan out, they’ve offered a few times before but nothing ever came of it. Hopefully now is the time. I/we can’t afford it to be otherwise.
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Update: We’ve found a house and put a deposit down (thanks Amanda!) and we’ll be moving sometime after April 1st.

Sometime last week I started resurrecting the old outdoor adventure company, well at least its services anyway.

I started working at what had been called Schuylkill River Canoe & Tube, then Valley Forge Outdoors, then Hidden River Adventures, and what was to become Rivertribe, at the age of 16, in the summer of 1995. I progressed from in my 6+ years there from the new guy handling equipment at the beach/dock, to serving as one of its general managers. After the company closed its doors in the fall of 2001, I headed west to California, where I spent close to 7-years.

Now back in PA where it all began nearly 15-years later, I’ve found my long-lived hope of returning to the river business as a way of life reemerging stronger and clearer than ever before. I’d been hedging around my interest in doing this with the previous company owner and was getting a lukewarm response. So I decided to step things up a bit and started throwing a website together at my previously registered domain, Rivertribe.org.

I simultaneously emailed a bunch of former employees from the old river days and some new potential teammates while building out the site and renewing my discussions with the old boss. So far feedback has been good and the owner is more cooperative than before.

I’ve also partnered up with an old friend Cory, who has really taken to the Rivertribe concept and so we’ve been hammering away at all the details over the last week. It’s starting to get pretty intense, what with my other efforts at starting up the SolarHoster and maintaining my work with the fabric company, not to mention the still new tasks the baby has brought with his birthing.

Needless to say my time has been nearly completely devoured these last few weeks and I’ve been posting here less frequently than my previous goal, but that’s just how it goes sometimes.

Be sure to check Rivertribe.org and as always, can be found streaming bits away on Twitter.

I’m going to try and capitalize on what I forsee as going be a popular interest in the new Sectéra® Edge™ phone that President Obama has negotiated use of, through a sales site at PresidentialPhone.com.

So instead of posting much here lately (as in the last 24-hrs or so), I’m working on this endeavor. It is definitely a get-rich kind of scheme. Hands down, no question about it.

Here goes nothing.

p.s. Yesterday’s comments didn’t fall on deaf ears, but moving cross-country twice in under six months and raising a baby is expensive, not to mention all the biz plans I have that require vast sums of money, that I just simply don’t have.

Several of my recent posts took a downward, perhaps defeatist attitude of sorts. A number of readers felt the need to email directly to share their insights, experience and concern over me/them. So I just want to make it clear that I’m fine.

Things can get intense, as we all know, and recently has been no exception for me.

As a hardcore Capricorn, I come down uber hard on myself. A lot. That’s just how it is. I’m a perfectionist. And quite an impatient one at that, when it comes to certain things. Mostly with regards to my career as so many around me continue to succeed at any number of things.

I have yet to meet any real substantial success in life and it’s just driving me nuts. This is just one of my challenges in life: to be happy where I’m at.

Anyway, thanks for everyone’s support; it is appreciated.

My office is too cold, had to move to the dining room to work last night and today.

Posted via email from JediWright’s Posterous

I must vent. Now.

DistinctiveFabric.com, Inc. is tanking (or so Josh and I think), but what the hell do we really know anyway? We’ve only been running this damned thing for four and half years now and barely with any involvement from its founder and our chairman, Adam. Guess this is what you get for putting a couple of first-timers in executive seats and a declining economy. Ironically enough, our sales have only been going up since last August, but our previous debt carried over, coupled with an inconsistent cash flow, just hasn’t weathered the dip in December as well as we’d hoped and planned for.

SolarHoster.com is failing before it even runs.

InfinityDrive.net is failing. Again.

GreenGurus.net…is all the above and more: I can’t even log on or into the damn site.

The baby is due any day now and we’re broke. Tristan wants to move back to Cali. I want to stay and I want to go. I wanted so much to birth Rivertribe finally.

Now all of my business ideas are crumbling. And I can’t get a job because either:

1. My credit is so bad they won’t hire me
1a. I’m overqualified on paper due to past employment
2. I never finished school and got a degree and the necessary experience
3. The economy sucks ass cause the rest of this country shares in some of my misery

I’ve lost hundreds of keyword domains I never should have bought in the first place.

I’m now thirty freaking years old and my life is miserable. Okay not really. I still fight and fight and fight for success. I have no idea of what drives me. I had hoped to figure that out with a whole lot more in life before having a child.

Now what? God only knows. Actually, I’m now giving serious thought to starting up a church. A fucking church. Jesus Christ. I must be insane.

Either through “Order of the Jedi” – I now own orderofthejedi.net and jedichurch.net
Or through “Moon Temple” – I now own moontemple.org and moonchurch.org

I’m fucking crazy. I’ve always known it. And I always see people thinking the same freaking thing, even if they deny it when asked.

Well, if I’m crazy I might as well build my own crazy house, heh?
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Update 1.15 10:50am: Feeling a might bit better now. Course, the wee hours of the night often leave me despairing more so than the light of day.

I’ve been trying to get my solar powered webhosting and green data storage services online for what seems an eternity now. Seems like every time I gain one step forward, another two set me back.

I’ve been working to varying degrees since this all began, with about six or so different sysadmins, making incremental changes to the solar server setup. To date, we’ve got our dedicated server account setup with AISO, our Plesk control panel installed, along with Plesk Billing, which we still need to figure out how to use; a secure certificate for InfinityDrive.net and a dedicated IP from AISO for it; and a few other random things, but still not enough to be up and running for business.

And it sucks: it really, really sucks. My business partner in this, Ryan Wartena, and I have been pumping money out collectively since March to get the account activated, the server setup and various related software licenses from Plesk (which is where they get you by the way).

Everyone we’re working with is great at what they do, but don’t share the vision that Ryan and I do. They just don’t seem to get it. Not enough to commit whatever they can to help bring this to life. And I just don’t have the time to learn everything I need to know to do it on my own: UNIX, PHP, etc.

It’s so damned frustrating, especially since after this upcoming monthly service charge will probably be the last we can afford. It has to happen now or it quite possibly won’t.

And all along, I have this growing sense that maybe it’s all just been a mistake from the beginning. It’s great to have a dream and even a potential great business idea, but if you can’t make it work, then it’s worth nothing. And that’s what I feel like it’s worth too often than not these days.

My biggest hang up with this is that I’m not the supreme sysadmin/programmer geek that I want and need to be. But everytime I sit down to try and learn some of the core skills I so desperately I start to feel the tears of frustration rise up at the seemingly unconquerable learning curve I face. Then all I can see is the money going out. And now someone else’s money. Someone that I feel like I’ve sucked in promising success, yet I know I made it clear that there was no guarantee. But I keep feeling guilty and around and around it goes.

It seems like I’m nothing but hype and everything I’ve ever preached is coming to a head with this. I hate being a goddamn Capricorn (and a double one at that). I hate being me. I am so sick of starting and stopping things. I just want to succeed with one goddamn thing for once in my life.

Fuck.