Places both inside and outside of the U.S have helped to define who I am. I grew up in Ocala, Florida. My parents split when I was 11. For years I devoted all of my time to engaging in and writing poetry. I had volumes upon volumes of books filled with writing. I grew up listening and watching thunderstorms. Ocala is sometimes known as the so-called "thunderstorm capital of the world" for its sheer amount of thunderstorms per year.
I have been on the beach during several major hurricanes, with my face in the strong gale wind. To answer simply, I would say my favorite sport is basketball, which I have been playing and following ever since I was a wee lad. I also played soccer, "American football", and baseball a lot. I have long tried to strive to be a business person, like I recall when I was ages eight through thirteen making my own sports magazines. With my old best friend Greg (who lived across the street) we built a mini putt-putt golf course out of his backyard digging the course ourselves; in the end we charged the neighborhood kids $1.50 per game to play. I also destroyed a pair of $85 sneakers (from the mud) in the process. I once found myself in deep shit from bringing goods that I bought at the local dollar store to sell at my middle school for prices ranging from $5 - $10, and I also sold small rubber bands from my braces per pack that other students would use for "rubber band wars". I use to buy, sell, and trade sports cards as if my life depended on the transactions. I would call up the local sports card shops, sometimes multiple times per day even disguising my voice sometimes, to keep asking if the new sports cards for that year were in yet. I wanted to be the first to buy them before they were sold out. Finally, I remember also selling potted cacti to a local plant nursery. My friend and I got (stole) the cacti from the field behind his house where he use to take his dune-buggy, LOL. Ah, the good ole days of being a kid in America.
I said that my parents split when I was 11. That part can be expanded on a bit more. My mom, Holly, started going crazy after she finished driving my dad away. My dad was pretty much long gone by that point anyways. So much destruction of the heart. After much verbal, mental, and physical abuse from my mom, and without knowing any extended family (my mom broke those relationships too), I first went to live at a children's home (FUMCH) near Deltona, Florida. Some of the best friends were made during this year at FUMCH like Taia Close, Kathy Noe, April Ward, and other amazing people. I wish I still knew them.
After leaving FUMCH, I tried living with mom again. The return of living there ended up being near torture at the worse of times. At this point, I was into all things Gothic. Dressing in all black and experimenting with clothes and body decorations. The police in Ocala, Florida are just plain evil. They took my mom's side when I requested help. One police officer told me that if I "did not obey every thing that my mom says, that I would end up in Hell with acid being poured on my body which would burn my body". I'm not kidding, this is what I remember the Ocala, Florida police officer saying. This is Ocala, Florida. They have religion, but no morals what-so-ever. I have seen over the last few years on television how kids as young as five years old have been put into jail for a variety of reasons. In central Florida they call this "tough love", but actually it's just plain ignorance. You have to understand that this is the life that I lived. Luckily, I have managed to be away from this chaotic society for over ten years, which has given me an opportunity to understand better "normal" people in other parts of the world.
When I was 17 the state took me and put me in a safer home with a foster parent. First though, there were no places available to stay, so I ended up spending a week in a mental hospital. I know that sounds funny, but there was nowhere else to go. That week there was also memorable in its own way. There was a piano, and since I enjoyed playing keyboards, then I spent some time playing my favorite songs for the patients in the hospital. Then I was shocked to find that my very good friend from school Adrianne ended up in the mental hospital with me! I couldn't believe that two of my best friends from school also ended up there. It turned out that Adrianne had an eating disorder. She was refusing to eat. In retrospect, I wonder if this was my fault, because Adrianne had asked me to go to a dance with her, but I ended up turning her down. What the heck was I thinking? She was beautiful with her long, slightly curly red hair, and cute face, and smart mind. Sadly, Adrianne was not the only good friend who ended up in a mental hospital while I was growing up. There was also Mandy who was friends with my good friend Joe. Mandy tried to slash her wrists in a bathroom when her and I went out for the day. I called my step-dad and luckily he saved the day by picking us up and driving us to the hospital.
My foster parents were black. It was my first time in my life living with black people. I know that sounds stupid now, but that fact for some reason seemed very important at the time (maybe because my mom is / was a racist). The foster mom who I called "mama" was kind to me. There were several other kids staying there with a whole slew and host of issues, including family problems, drug abuse, and so forth. After I was 17, I graduated from high school, my dad helped buy me a car - Which was cool. Although to be honest, the car was a POS, so much a POS that I even nick-named it "The Lemon". The car drove its last mile ever a few months later, then died a quick death. I moved into a house (party house) with my friends in Ocala. Somehow I managed to get away from everything in Ocala to move to a different everything. Shortly afterwards on an offer came my way to move to Daytona Beach with some new and old friends. My old friend Heather Flanagan hooked up with this guy named Matt-something, and this couple would become my roommates in Daytona Beach. Matt knew of the apartment, because his friend didn't want it anymore. We had an alright run-of-the-mill apartment in a cookie-cutter kind of apartment block. Matt and Heather would fight, and sometimes the fighting would become very abusive. I had to intervene several times in an attempt to protest Heather from harm, but doing so brought back some bad memories of abuse that I suffered under my mom's domain.
On a whim of an Internet chat friend I moved to Los Angeles in 2000. I stayed with my chat friend and her boyfriend. This couple would also fight nearly on a daily basis. The police were even called in a few times due to the intense fighting. I started working in the I.T field for one of the leading edge VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) companies operating in California. I started to go to parties in Florida and I continued the tradition in California, including throwing some amazing house parties. I got involved with "harm reduction / harm minimization" concerning recreational drugs. I became a moderator and then an administrator for several years on Bluelight - http://www.bluelight.nu.
After a year in L.A, I bravely left the U.S for the first time to go overseas. My old roommate Grant (who I knew from Bluelight) is Australia, and we use to talk about Australia. This is what first found my interest in going to Australia. I obtained a work visa for Australia, which was difficult, because there's very few "working holiday" options for Americans due to the lack of reciprocal agreements that the U.S has with other countries. On the way I stopped in the Fiji Islands for a week. I worked and traveled around Australia for four months, including taking a VW van with some friends from Melbourne, Victoria to Perth, W. Australia. I ended up falling in love with Fiji, and I decided to spend another five months there in The Fiji Islands. I stayed to travel, stay in local villages, but then I ended up finding opportunities to volunteer in different remote villages. The most amazing rainbows, sunsets, sun risings, and deserted white sandy beaches I have ever seen were during those months in Fiji. It was truly like my own private paradise for six months.
Returning to the U.S after my visa expired, I worked as a care-giver for a short while in Seattle. Here in Seattle is when I started to take a keen interest in eating and growing organic foods. I next decided to move to Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada for a duration of six months. Vancouver Island was very beautiful and I ended both every minute with my girlfriend and the island. During the fall I went to the Canadian Rockies where I got to see "autumn colors" (for the first) in the trees. I stayed in the Canadian Rockies for a month and a half, mainly in Jasper.
After my Canadian visa expired, I returned to the U.S. I stayed in Portland for a short while. I then did a "driveaway" and did a trip from Portland through Idaho, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona stopping everywhere nice along the way. Afterwards, I did training and took a job as a "trek adventure leader" in Santa Rosa, California, where I was leading (mostly European) tourists across the great national parks and cities of the U.S. One trip involved driving from San Francisco, California to Anchorage, Alaska - in only a few days, LOL!
Finally, I discovered San Francisco - a place that I still like to refer to as my real "first home". I lived there for a while doing I.T and private English lessons for my own consultancy services. I protested against the War In Iraq. I also joined several organizations that deal with human rights, gay equality, plus environmental and animal rights. The parties, music, and people of San Francisco are unmatchable. I stayed with a guy named Jon Ardivson who is / was the nicest guy in the world, and I don't mean in a gay sort of way. While in San Francisco I experimented one guy kissing a guy during Gay Pride Week, which helped me realize for certain for the first tine that I have absolutely no attraction to men what-so-ever, LOL. Sorry guys. :p These experiences helped to expand my mind in greater ways to the realities of the world.
After working for for a few months in San Francisco, I took off to southeast Asia to travel, work, and volunteer. My friend Jon suggested that Thai people are "sweet", and suggested that I should be there. I ended up living in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand for a while. For a month I taught English for an EU Micro-Project Development Through Local Communities (MPDLC) project at a rural village in Laos. I stayed with some friends in Malaysia and spent Christmas in Singapore for 2003. I then met a Thai girl. Her and I married in a hurry, because of problems concerning her family. She told me she was pregnant, and that her dad would force her to have an abortion if I didn't help her. I got all my money together, and I paid her us to be protected by security (because her dad made threats), married, and then we eloped to India. It was exactly like the plot out of a romantic action-adventure movie. We traveled around around India for the next five months. Actually, I visited over 30 states in India during that coarse of time; from Kerala in the south to Ladakh (Kashmir) in the north. I was blessed to have the opportunity to visit some of the most important places for the Buddhist, Sikh, and Hindu religions.
I returned to Thailand in September, 2004. My (ex-)wife and I attempted to live with her family. Actually, we had no other choice, because her dad forbid us from living anywhere else. Living with this father who absolutely hated me, even before he met me, threatened to kill me and so forth, was not a pretty experience. I have been online since my first time connecting to telnet and IRC networks in 1992, but during this marriage at that house was the first time I actually sunk into my own little world in front of the computer. The up side was that I began self-learning how to design and develop web sites. Finally, the cultural tensions / tension between her dad and I gave away. The relationship with my ex went into a tailspin, partially because she was always stuck in the middle. I announced that unless we could move out to have our "own life", that I was planning to move out on my own. Finally, I ended up moving out on my own. A life shattering divorce happened shortly after moving out on my own (at her dad's request). What you have to understand is that life is different in Thailand, whereas the children whether they are 12 or 32 still feel like they are absolutely bad people if they do not obey their parents on nearly every major life choice. I wonder why my life has almost always reflected family problems?
After the divorce, I was depressed for almost a year (or longer). Ironically, the rest of my eight months in Thailand would also generate some of the best memories in my life. I met another girl named Paully. She was just about to graduate high school. She and I absolutely fell in love with each other. We went out dancing a lot. As it turns out her dad was actually super nice to me (and liked me)! Now I was working full-time as a teacher, including one job as the head Science teacher at the school. I have always had a keen interest in biology and astronomy. I remember going to the "Full Moon" parties on the beach in the south of Thailand on some weekends with my two good Australian friends, and my Thai friends too. I spent a lot of time hanging out with these guys practically every weekend in Bangkok. Every weekday I took the Skytrain to work, and then went back home to be with Paully.
I returned to the U.S in October, 2005. I flew into NYC where I spent two weeks in Brooklyn with cool people from a hospitality web site. My goal was to use Amtrak's "rail sale" to take the train across the U.S for less than $100; which I accomplished. I made stops in Chicago, Madison (for Halloween), Minneapolis, and then the train came to a stop in Portland, Oregon.
A month later I found out through mutual friends that my beloved Paully had been cheating on me already for two weeks. Before I left Thailand, I 100% promised Paully that I would return to Thailand to be with her in January, 2006. I explained that I simply needed to return "home" to the U.S to "recharge the batteries" since I had already been away for almost three years by that point. As it turns out, it was true that she was cheating. The sad thing is that I didn't care, because I still loved her. When I confronted her about it, she just completely blew me off. It came as a surprise that the person who seemed like my soul mate, who I spent every free moment of every day together, who's family really liked me, and who's tears were shed as I was leaving Thailand would just casually leave me behind.
Portland was amazing. I lived in Portland and worked there as a house-sitter, pet-sitter, dog caretaker, cat caretaker, private English teacher, computer repairman, web developer, and other odd jobs that I freelanced. Portland is definitely the place that I like to refer to as my real "second home" (the first being San Francisco). However, as I was there for eight months, I started longing to go back to Asia. I thought about my son there who is / was living with my ex-wife. My ex-wife would chat and send e-mails on just about a weekly basis with photos of my son, and also asking me to come back to see him.
I decided to take the step of booking a ticket to go back to Thailand! This was going to be my great adventure and my chance to really "find myself", and see my son again. I really wanted to be a good dad in the loving sense, unlike my own parents. Things changed when out of nowhere a few months later I received an e-mail from a guy claiming to be my ex-wife's "new husband". At first, I simply didn't believe the guy. I checked with my ex-wife to confirm whether or not it was true. She confirmed that actually she had been remarried for more than a year. I guess her dad liked this guy more because he was older (almost 20 years my ex's senior), and with more money. I was crushed not to be able to see my son (her new husband threatened to kill me if I tried to see my son), I simply replied to his e-mail that several of the things that he said were actually untrue (pointing out the facts), that I also didn't know that my ex-wife was remarried, and also I wished them a happy marriage. My life once again torn apart by family problems. I just didn't get it.
Plans changed.
I went to Vietnam. I went to China. I went to Hong Kong. I went back to Singapore. I went to Indonesia for almost eight months. Being lost, I was still trying to find the elusive "self". Now I simply just consider myself a father to a beautiful son somewhere who I will probably never get to see. I consider myself an experienced teacher, caretaker, all around I.T guy, and I have a gazillion stories, poems, experiences, and life lessons. I consider myself to be almost seven years older from the time that I left the U.S (the first time). I would consider life to be successful if I could end up with a kind and smart woman to make a family together and plugging into that omnipresent love that at times seems to exist and is there all the time around the world. To quote the line from the song Muzzle by the Smashing Pumpkins: "My life has been extraordinary. Blessed, and cursed, and won." It's not my favorite song, but this one line does a pretty good job of summerizing things up nicely.
My Resumes (CVs)
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Shaun On the Web
- Carbonmade
- adore.cc
- engl.mobi
- intr.mobi
- openliberal.com
- freememe.com
- linuxos.mobi
- loveacrossborders.com
- multnomah.us
- opencontent.us
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