My confidence is lost.

In late 2013, I moved from San Francisco back to my home state to help take care of my ill mother. She’s still ill, but not as bad as she was. I was 22 at the time. I left with six figures in my bank account. Life was good, my mother’s health notwithstanding.

I’m not anything special on paper. College dropout — the number of credits I’ve earned I can count on one hand. I haven’t worked for any big startup. I don’t author any awesome OSS projects, I barely contribute to OSS. I have two exits under my belt (one at 18, another at 20), but they didn’t even deserve a press release. I market myself as an entrepreneur that happens to be technical.

I’m now down to about $1.5k, and I spend my money very wisely. The majority (calculated to 88.41%) has gone towards my mother’s hospital bills. I don’t drive a nice car; it’s a 2006 Mazda3. I love her. My total monthly expenses are less than $1,900 — that includes groceries, insurance, utilities, internet, phone bill, etc.

In 2014, I started an agency. We quickly blew up and did $2.1MM in revenue with only 9 people. Q1 2015, we were on track to do $4.6MM. My co-founder — design/sales to my biz/back-end — was involved in a tragic car accident. After about a week of drinking — I mean thinking — I had to wind things down. I closed up shop on the 1st of this year after. I placed my colleagues in great positions with clients.

The last week of December, I was stiffed for a $50k+ invoice. I’m now playing debt collector. Paperwork’s nice, and counsel is great to have, but some people just suck. That $50k was supposed to get me by while I look for a gig.

The logical thing to do would be to integrate myself into my former client’s companies. A felony conviction doesn’t help you there, even if the charges are 7 years old. Even if you’ve turned around since then. Even if you’ve consulted on CNN talking about the exact subject you were convicted of: fraud.

I’m frustrated with my job hunt. I can’t relocate from Minnesota. I’m not senior; I’m a very competent mid-level. I’m really comfortable with Ruby/Rails and the full-stack, but I’m timid to make a move to another language/framework because of how comfortable I’ve become. I’m incredibly business-minded, and it’s easy to recognize. I’m extremely easy to get along with.

My cat, whom I call “momma” or “izzy”, is amazing. She’ll be 19 in may, had offspring when she was 2 years old. She was indoor/outdoor for 12 years because as we couldn’t keep her inside. She’s still kickin’. I love her.

I’ll talk about my cat next time.

When it comes down to it, I humbly bow my head and mention that I can’t pass a background check because I did stupid shit when I was 18. I’m now 25 years and 1 week old. 

I digress.