JediWright.com

So today I get one of my fabric partners regular shipments of my mail from the last few months from my west coast office.

These deliveries are always so horrific to open, since still nearly half if not more of my life routes through the LA office: all of my DF responsibilities (taxes, corporate filings, chargeback notices, merchant notices, etc.), Green Gurus (nearly the same minus merch stuff since we’re not active), much of my personal stuff (subscriptions if I have any, health ins crap, etc.), and a host of other misc items.

Today was no exception of course. Not. These last few weeks have been killing me and everything I’d come to create in my nearly 7 years in LA, has been coming to a head, rather their end, including: Green Gurus, sustainably powered hosting and data storage plans, etc. I’ve been doing the best to minimize this but now into my 6 month here in PA, things just are really fraying from either end, faster and faster.

The only good note I can think of these days is my son Lee. I’m doing my best to not dump my negative energy into him and more and more am coming to enjoy time spent with him. It’s tough though, what with my losing my salary last week, amongst everything else: Rivertribe plans were just winding up, SolarHoster/InfinityDrive were still hanging on, barely, Tristan’s wish to move us to Ohio, my enrollment into ITT Tech with full tuition coverage but no living expenses covered, and no vehicle of my own still.

Anyway, Lee’s gaining about a 1-lb a week right now and still looking very handsome and cute.

Incidentally, my Flickr uploads haven’t been coming through in about a week or so and Yahoo is taking forever in identifying the issue. I’ve uploaded half again or more, of what’s there already, but they’re just not showing up. So I’m thinking about switching over to Picasa maybe. I don’t relish the idea of having to recreate all my sets there, but at least it’s free and it works.

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 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?
–
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.