The Origin Story

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Dad invented the sliding glass window in the early 1900s. He got over on the patent and was just a Renaissance man. Rebuilt himself. Developed this global real estate empire.

Left it for my mom when he died. So my mom was a baller growing up, so she had a very sharkish sort of alpha personality from the jump, zoom ahead to when I'm 8 years old. My parents divorced very early, and I took it very hard. I have a younger brother, and he was not impacted the same way I was from the divorce.

So I became man of the house very quickly, right? I raised my little brother. We had zero. And when I mean zero.

Father figures, role models, any masculinity, any male figures in our life that we looked up to, Just me and him riding thick as thieves. So I raised my little brother up into our teen years, Got him involved in lifting, got him involved in training, nutrition, the whole. The whole gamut. Stepfather comes into the picture.

My mom remarries, and I took it as an extreme assault and a front on my territory. I was extremely territorial. I was extremely hostile because I pretty much was man of the house. And this new dork comes into the picture and starts laying down the rule of the law.

New sheriff in town. And so me and him locked horns routinely throughout my teen years. And I made it very uncomfortable on him because basically I was trying to run him out of the house. I was trying to make it so brutal.

I was trying to make his experience so disgusting that you would have no choice but to leave. Because to me, it felt like, who the is this stranger that's now encroaching on this little life that we have? Because we settled into a little enclave in Beverly Hills, it was just me, my brother, and my mom. So conflict after conflict, zoom ahead.

I'm in high school, completely jaded. I know every day I'm showing up to class, and it's a complete joke. I have zero interest. I'm malingering, I'm languid, I'm morose.

I'm depressed. I have zero motivation to show up to another day of class. So senior year, I end up ditching over half the semester. I don't even show up.

My mom's out doing her thing, running the business. I'm at home in my pajamas around trying to learn penny stocks. Because you got to keep in mind, I graduated in 2005. So online was still a very wild frontier.

It was still very hard Scrabble. Very few killers had wedged themselves into the online space. It was still very new. Very few people were making money Online.

So you kind of had to do it the old fashioned way. You either had to trade stocks or you had to run and gun in other ways. So I'm senior year of high school, I'm ditching, I'm trying to teach myself the market. Trying to flip some little bit of cash that I had.

Getting absolutely hammered and destroyed on a daily basis was reading books, had very strong reading comprehension. But I just sort of had this very wild style in the market where I was just extremely aggressive and I would get over my head in positions and not know how to cash out in time. So I'm 17 at this time. And you got to understand, my household is so sterile and it's so cold and there's zero love anywhere in my house.

Every day that I would actually show up to school and I would walk home. I cringed when I would get to my doorstep. I did not even want to walk inside. The energy was so frail, so weak.

There was no backbone, there was no structure. There was no family sense of anything. There was fighting, screaming, yelling. Every single night of my life for years.

The family would erupt in flames. We would all go to bed angry at each other, pissed off. Nobody got along. We had zero communication.

It was a brutal living situation and I was desperate to get out as soon as possible because you got to understand when you're. When you don't have the patriarch and you lose your father early on to a devote to a divorce, the mom becomes the alpha male. So she's trying to play both roles. She's trying to be a mom and a dad.

So she starts ruling with an iron fist, she starts making crazy rules, she starts trying to essentially be a male force. And it obviously doesn't work. It backfires considerably. And so me and my mom would just constantly clash personalities and it was getting really bad.

So essentially one day I come home and she gives me an ultimatum. And she's like, look, you're either gonna go to college after high school full time, take a full semester of units, or you're gonna get a full time job. You're gonna work, you're gonna get a minimum wage job. Keep in mind, we're living in a complete luxury environment.

My mom's driving big body Benzes, she's getting new purses every week, she's balling out of control, she's taking trips to Hawaii, and she's over here telling me that I got to go get a minimum wage job or go to college, which I knew for a fact. Both of those paths were not for me. From the jump. And so I was extremely resistant and I was extremely recalcitrant from the moment she gave me the ultimatum.

So we were in a stalemate. Weeks had gone on. I never agreed to her terms. The pressure was mounting.

Every day I was at home, she would come home and I could tell she was in a hideous mood, almost resentful that I was basically lounging in her house for free, not doing anything that she considered ambitious. So I'm sitting in my room and I could feel the energy. I could feel her stewing in the other room. She's stewing, she's boiling, her blood is soaking that this young man is in her home.

And I'm not following the party line because that's the only way she knew. She knew those two roads. And I knew that my path had to be a lot more aligned with my spirit. So I go on a skiing trip and I had text communication with her.

I said, listen, I'm going to be back around 1:00am I need you to keep the door open. 17 years old, I come home at 1:00 clock in the morning and I'll never forget this. I bust the door open, the TV's on, she's in the living room and she looks very distressed. Her arms are akimbo. She's sitting Indian style.

Just looks extremely distressed. And she gets up and she confronts me in the hallway in the foyer and she says, hey. She goes, look in the other room. I peek around the corner, all my bags are packed.

Everything, every belonging that I have is packed in the corner of the room. She goes, you're out of here. You're not. You're not living here anymore.

Took one look at her, didn't argue, didn't start a fight. Said, no problem, Walked over, hucked a bunch of bags on my back, Walked out of the house at 1 o' clock in the morning. Nowhere to go, no family support, zero uncles, zero cousins. Our family was extremely shattered.

I had no extended family to speak of. I had never met my uncles, never met my aunts. Literally nobody to turn to, grab my bags, walk out the door. Remember walking two and a half miles to a park, tried to get some sleep on a bench, just till the morning.

Twilight would come and then I could figure something out. I was gonna try to either couch surf on a friend's couch. I knew that the time was against me. Got the most brutal night's sleep you could possibly imagine.

It was like that scene in Gladiator where Maximus is sleeping and he's got that dagger drawn when Marcus Aurelius comes up to him at the side of the bed. That's how I was sleeping. With like one eye open. I was like, what are these creepy in the park gonna do to me?

It was brutal. I was totally exposed to the open air. It was awful. Time came to a crawl.

Next morning, I hobbled to the gym and I got a workout in. And I'm looking at what I got, and I had about $15,000 to my name, saved up from little odd jobs that I had done, a couple little trades that I had executed. I had a little bit of a stash. And I was like, you know what?

I was like, she disagrees with my lifestyle. She disagrees with my dream of being a professional trader, being a professional gambler. Taking this off color approach. I was like, this.

I was like, this is not a larp. She thinks. She thinks that my spirit is going to be beaten down so bad on this path that I'm gonna have no choice but to come back, kiss the ring, and beg her for my bedroom back. And I knew that's the game she was playing.

She was like, I'm basically gonna starve him out. It was war. It was war. She was like, I'm gonna starve him out, send him to the street, and I guarantee you this motherfucker is going to come running back in one week begging for a roof over his head.

And he's going to comply to my terms. He's going to go to school, he's going to get a job, he's going to do normal. And there was zero percent chance that I was going to let that happen. Because to me, the only way I could interpret that chess move that she made is, well, she's trying to kill me.

She is sending me to the wolves. Keep in mind, I had zero tools, no vehicle, nowhere to go, no family to turn to. I'm in the fucking street, totally unprepared, totally thrown for a loop. I was not prepared for this.

And I decided in that moment that I would never crawl back. Ever. I would die. I would sooner die than ever fucking give up my dream of living the life that I wanted for myself.

I was never gonna donate four years to college, which I knew for a fact if I did it, I would have had a great life. I would have had housing, shelter, food provided for. She probably would have gotten me a whip. But if I went to college, I was going to waste four precious years of my early 20s.

And even worse, when I got out of college, I knew that I was just going to be groomed to be an employee. I knew what I would have to go work another job that I hated anyway, so it just wasn't an option. There was zero percent chance that I was willing to embark on that journey. So I was like, you know what?

I'm gonna go to Vegas and I'm gonna fire every dollar in my pocket at the sports book. And when I got there, I can't even express the animosity. The chip I had on my shoulder when I put. When I shoved those stacks of cash through the window on my first sports bet, it felt like I was firing at the world.

It didn't even feel like I was firing at the book itself. I was firing rockets into the abyss because I was like, you know what? I'm gonna prove everybody wrong. I'm gonna make this happen.

Not hard. Not hard to discern what probably happens next. Of course, I got flatlined because I was arrogant, I was cocky. I got completely destroyed at the sports book.

And it was one of the most brutal flights back home that I'll ever remember. I had to beg a childhood friend of mine to book me a flight home. And I was completely humiliated. And on the flight home, it was an empty flight back from Vegas to la.

I just remember looking out the window and I just remember just reinforcing in my mind. I was like, you know what? I will take the situation that I'm in a hundred times out of a hundred times, because I'm a free man right now. There's nobody breathing down my neck, nobody enforcing rules.

I'm free. I'm in charge of my destiny in this moment. I know when I land in la, I got nowhere to sleep. I got nowhere to go.

I don't even know where I'm getting my next meal, but I'm free. Nobody's gonna steer me in the. In any kind of direction. No one's going to influence me one way or the other.

I'm in charge. And that was a very relieving epiphany. Very relieving. And ironically, losing my bedroom, losing my home, losing my family gave me.

It took the world off my shoulders. It gave me so much relief. Even if I had to go sleep in a bush, I would have taken it because I was so desperate to extricate myself from the turmoil at home in the constantly butting heads with people who had different morals and values than I did. So I get back to la, and you got to understand, when you're homeless and you don't have anywhere to go, when you're in that survival mode, you end up running into very seedy characters.

You end up running into the proverbial trolls under the bridge. Just very dark, very conflicted personalities kind of gravitate to you because they know it can kind of sense that there's some, some like looming desperation in your heart. And so I would meet really up people and I learned a code of ethics. I learned that the most up people who were the most damaged, who had very checkered past, had my back harder than my own family.

The loyalty, the, the way that people would extend themselves to get me a meal when all I needed after a hard day's training was just some sustenance. So I come back to la. The wheels screech on the tarmac. I get off the plane, I got nowhere to go.

So where do I go? First stop the gym. Because you have to understand when you have nothing and you and you and you, your belongings and your identity has been stolen from you or taken from you, you're never a loser until you quit. And you're particularly never a loser until you give up on yourself.

And I never let myself go. I never let my grooming go. I never got out of shape. I stayed.

I was in peak condition. I was a animal. I was lifting retarded sums of weights. I was in phenomenal shape.

I looked great. I looked healthy, had a full head of hair, skin was on point. So when you have that going for you and you have that self image and that identity that's strongly rooted in some kind of performance, people take appeal to that. People look at that and they're like, you know what?

This guy's struggling. He's right now, it's very evident. But he's going places because he hasn't quit on himself. You know what I mean?

I didn't get, I didn't grow those greasy ass sideburns. I kept my kicks clean. My soles on, my shoes were always sterling white. I never let myself fall apart during the process.

And that's a very, very important distinction because a lot of people, when they face adversity, they let themselves go. They let one wheel fall off and then they let the second wheel fall off. And then soon the every wheel is off the vehicle and then you're. So once that first wheel came off, I knew I had to keep the rest of the wheels on if I had any fighting chance at all.

So I end up meeting this random black dude at Whole Foods after a workout session. I had begged some guy at the gym for 20 bucks so I could go Get a chuck steak, which is the cheapest cut. It's the shoulder of the cow. It's typically, people don't like it because it's very chewy, it's very tough.

It tastes kind of like a shoehorn. And so I'm eating this tough shoehorn, leathery beef every day that's like three bucks a pound just to get by. And I meet this very interesting character at Whole Foods who ends up being a football coach. He ends up being, one of, he ends up being one of the most talented football coaches in the state of California.

And he was at a nearby college and he had done 15 years in prison for a very, very serious crime that he had committed. And he was a very temperamental, hostile personality, completely sociopath. Took a liking to him, started hanging out with him every day. The next day after I met him, I told him my situation.

I told him that I was homeless, I had no place to sleep, no place to go. He gives me the key to his office at the college after knowing him for one day. And he's like, listen, I'm putting my reputation at risk. I'm putting my livelihood at risk.

He's like, you need to wait until 10pm every night. There's 24 hour patrol on the college campus. You have to hop the fence, climb through the forestry, climb down the hill. The football stadium was built like an amphitheater around this very forested area.

You need to climb down the bleachers, go into my office. He's like, you need to sleep there at night and in the morning get the out by 6am when all the players come back in and the coaches come in to do the players laundry. And so this dude gives me the keys. First night I'm climbing like Rambo through the forestry, trying to figure out how to get into this place.

And obviously he laid the ground rules when I was inside the fortress. So basically I had to sleep in the concrete locker room and his office was next door and it was sweltering heat, 120 degrees in the summer. And if you know anything about concrete, you know, concrete does not dissipate heat. It's actually a conductor.

So it's 120 outside. It's like a sauna. It's like 140 degrees inside the concrete structure that I was in. So I'm sleeping on the concrete floor, no blanket, no pillow, had to tiptoe through the night, couldn't flick on a single light because the patrol outside would see through the windows that the light was on.

So I'm doing this every night. And I'm strangely liberated from my circumstances in this moment. I am strangely inspired because every night that I close my eyes and lay down on the concrete, I was like, am I doing, Am I at least giving this my all? Am I a quitter?

And every day that I would wake up and have life and draw a breath in the air, I would realize that it wasn't that bad. It wasn't near as bad as being a faker, as being a charlatan and pretending and going on this path to please my parent, to make my mom happy and donate my soul. I was like, I will take this every day of the week. All I got to do is wake up the next day, hobble to the gym, tired, beaten up.

And I was like, I know if my presentation stays on point and I stay fit and I don't let myself fall apart, I will meet the right person who's going to help me get involved in business. I know for a fact it's either going to be a woman or it's going to be a man. Someone is going to lend me a helping hand because I refuse to give up. After about five weeks of staying in the concrete structure, I had never had an issue until one night.

One night I walk into the structure, same routine. I'm waiting for the little car with the lights, a little, the little police officer who patrols the property. I wait for his lights to disappear from view. I come down the hill, I enter the building, I go to sleep.

One o' clock in the morning, I gotta take a wicked piss. So I get up and I go into the bathroom. And when I walk into the bathroom this time I notice that they installed a motion sensor light. So the entire fortress came just lights up with fluorescent light.

And it is bathed in light, very, very that strong hospital esque white light. And I'm like. So I run out of the bathroom and I'm praying that because my presence is no longer there, the light's gonna flick off in like 30 seconds. Won't turn off.

So I'm sitting there and my heart is bursting out of my chest. I'm like, someone's gonna see that there's somebody in here. At one o' clock in the morning I was like, this is not gonna end well. So I go back into the locker room and I'm trying to just relax and stay calm.

And I'm like, I need that light to turn off. About a minute goes by and the light finally flicks off and I'm like, I'm good. So I lay down, I'm going to sleep. Ten minutes later, I hear a monstrous thundering on the metal.

There's this huge metal garage door that opened from the locker room and you would go out the garage door and there was a path that led down to the stadium. I hear banging on the metal door and they're like, this is the police. You need to come out right now or we're gonna bust down the door. So I'm yelling at them from the other side of the thing.

I'm like, listen, I'm unarmed. I'm coming out the side door. Don't shoot. I'm coming out.

I'm helping my buddy who's a coach here. They're like, sir, you need to get the out of there right now or we are gonna bust down the door. I open the door, hands up, these dudes throw me on the pavement on my stomach, jump on top of me, guns are in my face. 4. Four police officers, they're like, what the are you doing here?

I was like, I'm helping out with the team. I'm doing laundry for my boy. And I was like, I'm doing some assistant work. Made zero sense.

But I was on the spot and I had to come up with something. So they call him. And I was very lucky that he answered the phone because it was like 1:30 in the morning. And he came down there and he smoothed over the whole situation and told him that I was his assistant, that I was helping him work some of his booklets and helping him run plays for the next season, and that he had given me the key to just do some assistant work for him.

They end up letting me go and they said, sir, do not ever come back here again. You are obviously not allowed in this building whatsoever, especially after hours, so understand. It's now 1:30 in the morning. I am exhausted.

I am so beaten to a bloody pulp. And now I gotta walk my ass and do the walk of shame on the concrete. Walk out of the campus at 1:30 in the morning with nowhere to go. Yet again, I have nowhere to go.

So I end up staying up again till 5 o' clock in the morning completely besides myself. I am so distraught. I'm so confused. I'm so flustered.

I'm so filled with rage, quite frankly, at my situation. I don't have a pot to piss in. I don't. I don't even have enough money for a motel.

So the next morning, I hobble and stoop into the gym and I randomly approach a trainer there who I Did not know well, but I had a very good reputation at the gym because I was the strongest athlete there by far. And every time I would go in there and do my Olympic lifts, it was a spectacle. Would give me accolades and praise for my talent, blah, blah, blah. So I was a known face at the gym.

Everybody knew who I was. So I walk up to this trainer who I didn't know from Tom, Dick or Harry, and I was like, listen, brother. I was like, here's my situation. It's extremely stark.

I was like, I just need a helping hand. I was like, I need somebody to come through for me right now because I am at my wit's end. And I was like, I truly. My back is so against the wall right now, I don't know where I'm gonna go.

He's like, listen, I'm off here at 5:00 today. He's like, you can just float around the gym, do whatever you need to do, use the shower. He was like, I'm gonna take you to go get a hearty meal. He's like, you can crash in my second bedroom for a couple days to get your head right and figure out what your next move is.

Couldn't believe it. A stranger, an absolute stranger, who I'd never been in a situation where I had to rely on a good Samaritan for support. This dude's showing me more love and more compassion, more empathy than anybody in my family ever did. This motherfucker's opening his front door to me.

It was a major blessing. So he took me. I got a nice steak that night, slept on his floor in the second bedroom. He didn't even have a mattress in there, but I was just so grateful.

The simple, simplest little things in those moments almost bring a tear to your eye when you're just sleeping on hardwood and you realize that a. A person who doesn't owe me anything at all could have completely told me to go myself. Is letting me invade his personal space and completely disrupt the rhythm of his life. To show a young ambitious man some compassion.

Just absolutely extraordinary how strangers, people you would never expect in this world to have your back, will come through for you when you need it most, when it's a genuine need. So I got the best night's sleep of my life. And I recovered pretty well in the next 48 hours because he fed me the next morning. I met him back at the gym.

Dude bought me beef jerky, bought me some hard boiled eggs, just keeping me alive. I had met this other 40 year old woman at whole Foods that I had her number. She's a woman who had asked me for health advice just from seeing her in the store, being a regular. And I had forgotten that I had her number.

And she was semi attractive. She was a former supermodel in her early 20s, but she was 40. So she was a little bit beat up and a little bit washed. And I was like, I don't know if I really want to get involved in this, but I had no choice.

So two days later, I called her. And out of the blue, I didn't know this woman at all. We had just had some spontaneous conversations with inside the store. I told her my situation.

I said, listen, I said, I need some serious support right now. I said, I got nowhere to go. I said, I need a headquarters. I need a command center to rebuild my life right now.

And I was like, I am literally begging you for an opportunity to just get a couple weeks of rest because I'm losing my mind at this point. I'm completely losing my mind. I'm operating at frenetic pace. I'm lifting to max every day.

Strong as. You gotta understand. Some days I would go to the gym and I only had one meal for the entire day. I was fasted, I was under hydrated, I had no supplements, no minerals, no vitamins, nothing.

And I'm still putting up numbers because I was just relentless. And so I told her the situation. And again, a good samaritan, out of the blue, she's like, absolutely no problem. She's like, come over right now, I'll take care of you.

Gives me her address, I go over there, trainer gives me a ride. And this turned into a wild saga. Because what I did is I did the most rookie move that you never do, but I didn't realize it at the time, is that you never, ever your landlord, ever. And you never particularly.

You never have sex with a woman who's helping you get out of a spot. Because it creates a ton of emotional bonds and it adds an extra layer of complication that's very hard to get out of. So I'm a rookie. I go, I show up at this chick's house first night, I her next morning, you can't even make this up.

She's professing her love to me. She's like, you're the perfect man for me. She's like, I could see myself marrying you. Tells me she loves me.

I. I didn't know. I've had five conversations with this woman. And I was like, jesus Christ.

I don't Know if you guys have seen the movie Misery. I was like, is this gonna turn into like Kathy Bates? I was like, this woman's gonna like, try to keep me hostage and prisoner in her home. I was like, what kind of can of worms did I just open here?

But I needed the rest. I needed it. I had no choice. So I was like, there was an extra, there was a metagame here, right?

There was a, there's a, there's some game theory here. I'm like, you know what? I need to be pleasant and I need to also reciprocate. This woman is kind enough to bring me into her home and let me stay here.

Keep in mind, she filled the fridges with the highest quality steaks, raw milk, eggs. She cooked for me every fucking day. She would massage me every night to bed. She would literally climb into bed with me and fucking massage me till 5, 5 o' clock in the morning after my hard days of training.

And that's all I was doing. All I was doing was training and trying to meet the right people and figure out what my next business move was. So it gets insane. So one night, she's completely head over heels for me, by the way, and I didn't have a pot to piss in.

And she's professing her love to me more and more. And my biggest mistake as a rookie was I stopped her. And you can't do that. Once you her, you have to continue, especially when she's providing for you, because you have to, like I said, you have to create that reciprocation.

So I withdrew myself and pulled back and decided to make her more of a friend. And it created a ton of tension. So one night I'm standing on the corner of Whole Foods with this other beautiful young 19 year old chick that I had just met, ironically at the same Whole Foods, and I'm making out with this girl on the corner and I get a very creepy feeling for some reason, almost like someone was watching me. And I look over my shoulder and this woman is in her car, lights are turned off, she's across the street and she's staring at me from across the street, making out with this chick.

And I'm like, here we go. I know, I know where this is headed. Flicks on the lights. Once she sees that I saw her, speeds up to me, rolls down the window and goes, what are you doing?

So I walk up to her and I dissociate myself from the girl that I was with for a second and I stick my head through the window and I was like, yo, you need to get the out of here. I said, this is very creepy. I said, you do not come up on me in my personal space, in my personal time when I'm outside of your house. And she was like, no, no, you don't understand.

She's like, you can't live in my house and be around with other women. So she lays down this ultimatum on me. That was insane. And I was put on the spot.

So I end up leaving. I'm like, you know what? This, I can't live under these kind of rules or this kind of tyranny. Even though this woman has been so good to me.

I was like, I cannot conform and, and get in a relationship with a 40 year old woman. So this girl that I was with on the corner had a car and we end up driving to the beach that night and we stayed up for 24 hours, did all kinds of crazy on the beach together, had sex with her. It was, it was a wild night. Next morning I'm invigorated.

I'm just like, I'm on a wild adventure. I just got kicked out of this chick's house because I got caught making out with her. I still got nowhere to go. This girl lived with her parents so she can't move me in.

And then the miracle happened two days later. Let me back up. I texted the woman, the 40 year old woman, the next morning and she, we had a two hour conversation on the phone and she agreed to let me back in the house. She was like, look, I, she's like, I don't have the heart to kick you out.

I know you're really struggling. She was like, but you seriously cannot disrespect me while you're in my home and you can't sleep with other woman. Very reasonable request. I could completely understand it because I was under her roof.

So I go back to her for two days. And I had met a guy at the gym about a year before that, and I had also been putting out feelers with him and trying to do some business. He was one of the biggest credit card processors in the country. And so he would handle huge merchants and he would do all the processing for them and he would get a huge fee for that.

And he needed to place some accounts and he needed someone with a valid driver's license and a valid bank account. And at the time I was a perfect candidate because I was green. I didn't really have much credit, but I had a wide, I had wide open bank accounts to start receiving some of the wires that he needed. Because if you do too much volume and credit card processing, they shut you down.

So he's like, listen, he's like, I'm gonna run a bunch of these wires through your account. He's like, I'm gonna give you a monster commission. Don't worry, worry. I was like, no problem, let's do it.

Open an account for him. Two days later, after this whole saga with the chick that blew up, he calls me and he's like, yo, you got a fifty thousand dollar commission. Couldn't believe it. Almost wanted to cry.

I literally could not believe that after losing my entire ass in Vegas, within a 10 day period, I'm already back on the saddle and I got 50k. When you're 18 years old, I was, I think I was, I'm pretty sure I was 18. When you're 18 years old and you get $50,000, it feels like you just won the lottery. This money was a windfall that came out of the heavens for me.

So I take the money and I get my own rental car. And now I got wheels and now I got food, and now I'm back in the game. And the whole process starts churning over again. I'm still at this woman's house.

She's still being good to me, but I could slowly see the tension. She was starting to get resentful that I was living under her roof because I was a wild man. I would go out late at night, come home at 1 o' clock in the morning. She's like, what are you doing?

Let me see your phone. I was like, there is zero percent chance you're going through my phone. And she was like, well, you're living in my house. It was, it started to get that.

It started to get real shitty, real pissy, like tit for tat. I'm doing this for you, so you need to do this for me. It became very transactional, which wears a wild man down. I'm not built for that kind of conformity.

I'm just not built for it. So long story short, a couple weeks go by, then a month goes by and this chick that I, that I had, that I had slept with on the beach gets pregnant and I'm broke. She's broke. And we 100 agreed, we're like, you have to get an abortion.

So I get her the abortion pill and I still got a bunch of. I got a nice chunk of money left over from the 50k that I had got. And I was like, listen, I'm gonna take you to Vegas. I'm gonna put you up in the best suite for two days.

You're gonna take your medicine. I was like, I'm gonna feed you. I'm gonna take good care of you, but you need to just be in bed for two days. I was like, I got unfinished business here.

So I fly her out to Vegas with the. The pill. Give her the pill. I don't know if you guys have ever been with a woman who takes that abortion pill.

It is a nightmare. It was one of the most horrifying experiences that I've ever been a part of. And this chick was Eastern European, stoic, cold, strong and durable as. And she was completely coming apart at the seams when she took this medicine, because it obviously dispels and it forces whatever's in you out.

She was keeled over, holding her belly, crying tears that I've never seen a human being cry before, just in absolute agony and misery. And there was nothing I could do. She was inconsolable. And this was.

This happened. This was a 24 hour straight, brutal process. And I'm out there firing on games. I'm chain smoking cigs.

I got my buddy, who was much older than me, who met me in Vegas. He would run my action for me because. Because I wasn't 21, so I would give him cash. He would go run my action through the windows.

I'm betting at this time when I'm. When I'm 18, I'm betting like 7,000 a game, which at the time felt like a tremendous amount of money on a sports bet. So I've got this girl with me. I still got the pad at home and everything.

Starting to kind of look up because I got my swagger back. I got a little bit of money in the bank I'm firing. I got this girl that I'm taking care of. She's loyal, she's sticking by my side.

She's willing to do anything for me as well. Come back to town after the weekend, go back to the woman's house. And the woman that I was staying with had started to play these strange little games where she would hide my keys to the rental car that I had because she wanted attention. So it would be like she would, like, make these fake little hunts within the house where we would have to, like, find my keys.

And I knew that she was hiding them, but I was like, I just have to participate a couple more weeks until I can get the free out of the situation that I'm in. And every time I was there, she would try to sleep with me. She'd try to kiss up on me. And I was very withdrawn.

I did not want to touch her. I didn't want anything to do with her. I wanted her as a friend, which is a very difficult expectation to put on a woman who's providing for you and disrupting her life. But I was way too immature to grasp that at the time.

I was actually a to her. And it was completely unacceptable and very up behavior on my part. But I didn't have the wherewithal to see it at the time. So I continue to disrespect her within the context of her rules in her house.

I'm still seeing other chicks. Now my ex is involved. Now I'm sleeping with my ex. So now I've got three.

I'm in a huge tryst with three women at once. I still have nothing, still have nowhere to go, still have no stability. All of this to tell you that every morning I woke up with all of this drama, all of this chaos. The world felt like it was just squeezing me.

I was still free. I was still free because I could have walked away from it at any moment in time and just hobbled my way back into the gym, which was my only sanctuary at the time. The only place I could turn to when I had nobody or nothing was the shower at the gym, the iron, and the good blessings and good care of a couple good samaritans who had my back. And I tell you all of this because the chaos that I was enduring and the chaos that I had intentionally subjected myself through.

When you are in survival mode, you become an adrenaline junkie. Your adrenaline is redlined 24 7. And I've never quite come down from it. To this day.

It's 17 years later. I still have to extricate myself and pull myself out of situations where I want to go back and feel that sting and feel that, that. That. That chaos of instability.

Because at the end of the day, I know that you could take every thing away from me, but you cannot take me from me. And that's what I realized in those most hopeless moments when I had nowhere to go, is I realized that you could take it all, but you ain't gonna take my identity away from me. And that's pretty much the only true stability you have. Have is that notion there's no other financial.

There's nothing else on earth that can actually give you that stability and give you that feeling of self confidence than knowing that you are a survivor and that you are willing to do anything, including Blow up your whole life. I don't. I didn't care how many times it took, how many iterations of myself that I had to recreate. I was never in a million years ever gonna go bend the knee and go live somebody else's life to get a pat on the back.

Because to me, that was a far worse fate than death itself. There are way, way more hopeless, disparaging, and malevolent ways to live a life than death. Death for a lot of people is actually liberation from the situations that they cannot stand. And every day that I would wake up from that situation and I would just slowly put one foot in front of the other, one day at a time.

Sometimes it was one minute at a time. It was so tough to even dream or think about tomorrow or yesterday. It was just about, where am I going to get my next meal? Where am I going to rest my head tonight?

And when your life is that simple and you are aligned with your spirit, it. I was happy. That's the bizarre part about it. I had never faced so much happiness and genuine joy waking up every day than just being involved in the jeopardy and chaos of the whole thing.

Because I was living out my own destiny. I was creating my story. I was no longer beholden to fake authorities. Fake authorities in the form of bosses, in the form of your.

Your parents. It's all a joke. Teachers, professors, it's all fake. It's all fake.

And when you show Freddy Krueger that you're no longer scared of him, he disappears from your dreams. All the authority around you is fake. Your boss doesn't really have that much power over you. You're playing a game.

You're playing a role. And that's the one thing that I've learned more than anything is every is playing a role with every cast of characters that are involved in their life. And it is completely up to you to choose what role you are playing. One of the best sayings I've ever heard is, there are no victims, There are only volunteers.

And I die by that principle. There are no victims, There are only volunteers. People sign up for the relationships. They train the people around them how to treat them.

It's all by design. Even if you have been victimized, understand that you played a role. You decided you have a choice every day to be who you want to be. And that's where I got my mantra.

That there is nothing more powerful than self reinvention. Because you can reinvent yourself at any given moment that you choose. You can walk away and give a cold shoulder to all the fake authority in your life and live out your destiny. And my story is, is one of complete triumph because I pushed through the mud for years.

It took me years after that experience. And that's just one tip of the iceberg from the heartbreak and catastrophe that I have experienced on my way to some semblance of stability, which is still hard for me because I think stability is a illusion. The only solace that I get nowadays is in my own strength and in my solitude. That's it.

There ain't anything else that you can fall back on. When the chips are down and you're in a true crisis situation, it ain't your money that's going to bail you out. Your money. If you're in a true crisis, if you're in a true emotional crisis, your money will 100 metastasize and make that situation worse.

Worse. I'll tell you why. Because you're going to use the money and try to spend your way out of it. And when you do that, you miss the tough lessons.

You miss the whole gist of life and what it's all about. It's all about sitting with yourself in those moments and staying true to your path. Because all the answers are in the mirror. That's it.

There is no human on earth has the answers for you. They're in the mirror. And it's really hard for somebody to look in that mirror because you are horrified at what you've become and the things that you are denying in your spirit. You cannot be successful on this planet if you deny and you constantly suppress and push down your interests and desires.

I tweeted about this the other day. The most faggoty gay thing you can do as a man is to hide, obscure and disguise what you are truly interested in this life to make any other happy. I don't care if it's your kid. I don't care if it's Christ himself.

You have an obligation to yourself to live out your destiny. Parents do not have children so that their children can be clones of them. You have a child so your child can have its own unique experience. I am a father.

I have a 18 month old baby and my mission is to allow him to have his own unique experience and not be anything like me if he doesn't. So choose. My job is to guide and that's all I can do. But I will not overstep that boundary because it was done to me and it is extremely destructive.

And I'm one of the lucky ones because I never Quit. And I never gave up. But you are only a loser once you quit. Once you quit.

That's why. And I'll use an extreme example, we all heard about that Denver shooter, that dude, Roman McClay. I read his book. That was one of the best books I've ever read.

Dead serious. That book is phenomenal. That dude was a giga brain. But you have to understand something.

His actions are so beta and so gay. Because what it is, when you harm other people in the way that he harmed people and you flip out and you lose your cool. What you've done is you've demonstrated that you have an incapacity to play the game. The game beat you.

We live in a capitalist society. It's an all encompassing system. It's not just an economic thing. We live in a capitalist society.

When it comes to women, everything is a marketplace. And when you flip out and you exact revenge on people like that dumbass did, you have to understand that it is the most behavior that you could possibly exhibit. I heard a couple of retards on Twitter saying that dude was alpha. Like where on planet Earth is that alpha behavior?

That's a guy who got defeated by the game, couldn't win, got his ass kicked and so took it out on a bunch of other people. And my process has taught me to respect the game over everything else. Because the game is all you have. And guess what?

You're forced to play it whether you want to or not. Every lifestyle you choose, you're playing the game. Even if you decide to be a slob on unemployment, sitting on your couch watching soap operas all day, you still gotta play the game. So why not give it your best shot?

With the very brief snapshot of time that you have on this planet. Why wouldn't you see how far you could possibly go and how far you could take it? How hard you could drive your body? Do you understand how durable your body is?

How durable the human brain is extremely durable. It can withstand incredible amounts of pain, devastation, catastrophe. And a lot of you aren't even giving it a fair shot. Not even giving it a fair shot.

So the game comes first. And you have to respect the game. Because you are a player. You hit the ground running when you were born and there's no way to stop running.

So play it as hard as you can, as earnestly as you can. Because if you can't prove to anybody that you can play the game, then everything that you do ends up as a cope. That's why I always say if you become an ascetic monk. If you become a meditator, if you.

If you become a yogi, all those things are great. But beat the game first. Find a threshold of success, and then it's cool to run off to the mountains, to the hot springs and go meditate and with monks for a month, because you're rich. You beat the game.

You proved it. But if you haven't proven that you can play it, that you can make money, that you can be financially independent, that you can help other people, that you can give other people opportunities, that you can be influential, that you can be a leader, then what the fuck are you doing sitting in a meditative stance all day, contemplating the cosmos. You lost. You lost.