Ask HN: How did you escape homelessness?

I have been there, including the path of blaming others for my issues. I became homeless for some time after going this "activist" route, fighting family and friends after going broke because of a failed startup.

My "solution" at the time, not very wise, was to double down the issue, joined a project in a left wing movement that fights for land rights for the poor, MST. It was very risky, I'm glad things worked out well in the end as I used my tech knowledge to help the project meanwhile getting a job and a place to live in a shared house of other hackers and creators. But not without some big fights and situations that could have got me killed. So not sure if I would recommend going down the "activism" route. Sometimes people think they can change the world but aren't capable to help their family and friends - and actually expect help from them. Maybe it is time for you to connect with the people that you are demanding help from.

You seem like you replied sincerely... so I will.

Luck should not be a factor in this context.

I apologize for any miscommunications up to this moment.

I am not "a month or two from losing it all"... but I am a month or two away from liquidating my retirement account, and using the points I intended on a honeymoon on a one way exit from this poor excuse for a democracy.

I apologize for posting when I hadn't eaten -- it's a problem for me -- I skip a meal, let my blood sugar get low, feel triggered by something on the news, and... get into it in the comments.

You didn't give me what I wanted, and neither did a single other person in quite a large thread, hence my anger.

What I was hoping for is one of the many so called anarchists, leftists, or progressives who have hired me in an allegedly nonprofit capacity would connect me with work that lifts me out of precarity rather than give out narcan, condoms, and weed cards designed to disarm the vulnerable and allow their exploiters to bill for services more akin to extortion than mental health treatment.

I shouldn't have been coy: I wanted leads. Many people visit the so called Paris of Appalachia, and over time I've tired of the ones who ignore why we have negative population growth as they sit saying things in 2022 they should have said in 2013 -- or sooner.[0,1,2]

I don't really need mental health resources -- I used the copy of "The Relaxation Response"[3] the last decent therapist I had gave me this morning. I'm good to go. (And if you get that reference... that... outside joke that's also an inside joke... I hope we are forever on the same page.)

Someone could easily point me someplace to be CSO, or someplace to be generic security engineer number N -- my last role, I automated portions of my job with free tools to replace the ones they were paying for. But it never lead anywhere, hence... getting angry. Because I felt Tom Sawyered -- one too many times the football had been yanked, not by some kinkster on the side of the road with a cardboard sign but by supposedly liscenced professionals who treat posts like I'm about to make as some kind of... terroristic threat, rather than a very kind explanation of what makes people extremists and how to avoid situations like October 2020, the last time I took off the mask and spoke in the real.

Instead, we have people who created the conditions we are now, wars, refugees, people with ill behaved dogs and/or children wandering the café like they own it... showing up at the finish line to try and give justtt enough aid to avoid Star Trek style Bell Riots[4,5].

That's why I said and did the things I did. This is an emergency, it has been an emergency since my own father smashed the laptop I was studying for OSCP on after I was forced out of the Center for Democracy & Technology for refusing to weaken web, since unlike when I was a teenager, I'm not a few strokes shy of script kiddie.

I'm the guy they took to the range on Pearl Harbor Day to practice firing a 1911, one bullet at a time, center mass,.

I'm the guy who put my backups into a safe deposit box, then told the ringmaster at Atterbury I was considering buying a gun, without stating why, and rented a Glock .40 because a .357 has too much kick, even if it's one with a longer barrel.

I'm the guy who walked into an open mic he saw on a pole and declared "I'm not an Israeli spy, and I will not be gone in the night -- electricity, like driving, is a privilege -- if you stop having elections you will stop having power, in every sense of the word".

If am a your enemy, you are a totalitarian, and deserve to get down on your knees and thank whatever entity you please that I have only used my WORDs. And then BE HELPFUL, or be OUT OF MY FEED. (The royal you, the generic you, not you in the HN parent sense)

So to be utterly CRYSTAL clear, having type this up and looked it over before hitting post since you don't seem like you're being unhelpful on purpose: I don't need mental health resources. Our new mayor's assistant was tear gassed when we replaced the old with one who will hold the abusive nonprofit that has a monopoly on mental health care to account.

People seem to think I'm literally a communist. Under communism, we would have taken folks like the ones I named that night and fired a volley of AK shots into their skulls like they were the Ceaușescus.

As I said in October 2020: your post-Columbine threat model is broken, we were made in the 80s, began to form memories as the USSR fell. We are not your caregivers, we are not your friends, and if you abuse your access we will laugh when you end up in the ground with Jeffrey goddamn Epstein.

My father used to talk a lot, before his Alzheimers, about working for Carter[1], in the same tone I spoke of volunteering for Bernie -- "if things had been different" and your voice trails off, as you realize it's been a long time since you felt sincerity.

e lived next door the the Democratic Chairman of Allegheny County, and Mr. Stevens told my dad if you want to do anything beyond the county, it's simply impossible if you actually want to do good work.

I don't know what to do, when people who met me as a child say things like "I'm Italian -- you can't say that", openly returning to the ways of the mafia we drove out of here in the 90s.

But that's the issue, we just replaced one monster with another: when I was working hard to replace the laptop my dad smashed, people would say shit like "Oh I had some Ukranian women with no ID come into my tow yard, I refused to give them their phone back because they'll never pay for the car... they yelled at me, I nearly called the police"

I told the woman "You have to let them have their property, you can't just... tow a car from a wreck then deny someone the way they communicate with whatever... means they have to pay you back. I'd have yelled at you too. I might have done worse, if you broke the law then threatened to call the cops to police my tone because I was a victim of human trafficking"

And she threatened to slap me, told me I was autistic, then had a meltdown and drove away without giving me the cookies I never asked for, because I told her what I tell every other boomer who is stupid enough to get aggressive -- one unwanted touch and I will Tang Soo Do you in the head so hard you will meet your maker, and I will sue your estate for the cost of fixing my broken hand since I was too kind the last time I had to punch a nazi.

So... thanks for the advice. But I think I'll be fine, and what's going to happen is that false allies who hand out prophylactics and narcan and the occasional sandwich are going to learn the terror of truly living under the neoliberal ideas on free speech and free association the violently insisted on.

They dish it out, but can't take it, and I will literally get on a plane and leave this place to live knowing no one is going to pick up the... slack... ever again, if that's what it takes for me to pursue happiness.

But I'd like to stay, if we can find a third way.

Do you want that? Does anyone? Or are we going to do it the hard way?

It's your move. Your so called community's move. I'm just responding, as it has been since 1991.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh#Demographics

[1] >*In reality*, former president Carter is reported to have made this dire assessment in 2013, during the administration of former President Barack Obama, and in response to whistleblower Edward Snowden's recent revelations of global electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency. The source of the quote was a 17 July 2013 article which appeared in the German newspaper Der Spiegel. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jimmy-carter-functioning-d...

[2] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/nsa-affaere-jimmy-car...

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20111130192936/http://www.massge...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_Tense_%28Star_Trek:_Deep_...

[5] "The report observed the political state of the United States, Europe and Japan, and says that in the United States the problems of governance 'stem from an excess of democracy' and thus calls for actions "to restore the prestige and authority of central government institutions." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crisis_of_Democracy#Overvi...

[6] https://web.archive.org/web/20120309011043/http://www.trilat...

> Are folks willing to help? Or am I just a signal in the noise to be discarded when I'm no longer useful? I've never killed or raped anyone. I'm not a monster.

And yet you seem to have no problem making threats to random people on the internet. If you do this on the internet, who knows what you do in real life? I wouldn't say what you're doing is that much better, and to be frank you are on the way to becoming a "monster" if you aren't already one. You certainly are not employable right now.

The fact that you have been hurt by other people who have acted like monsters doesn't excuse that; rather, that's generally how "monsters" are created (the cycle of suffering). Many people have suffered the kind of trauma you have suffered but without going in the direction you have gone with your life. The sooner you recognize that, the better.

You've made a lot of excuses for your poor life decisions that you blame on your family, on people you used to work for, on those who have wronged you, on really everyone but yourself. You haven't taken responsibility for the direction your life has taken. Until you do that, why would the direction of your life ever change? After all, you're mistakenly believing other people have the power to change something about your life that only you can change.

I'm not a doctor. But, as others have mentioned in this thread, it really doesn't seem like you're okay. And it seems like you either are not in the right state of mind to understand your own problems, or you are in denial of them, or maybe a little of both.

You wouldn't ask Reddit what to do about a gunshot wound you received; you'd call 911 and take yourself to a hospital. Your current situation may be more similar to that than you may realize. You really need to speak to a clinician; it's possible that psychiatric medication or some other kind of other clinical intervention could help save your life. But again -- only you can make that choice.

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> I got the impression RAND and CERT treated my interviews as free consulting sessions, so they're no longer on my list. Any other questions?

Given how much of a professional failure you are, why do you believe that these failures are due to conspirational environmental factors rather than your own inability to execute? What makes you think your "free consulting sessions" would contribute rather than erode value?