People love to talk about their experiences, people feel that they’re experiences are important, the life blood of their reality. But no matter what you’ve experienced, somebody else has experienced something similar. The importance of our experience isn’t just the experience itself, it’s what we do with the experience, what we learn from the experience, and what we become because of the experience.
The idea of human power as being status driven is a fallacy. True power is when a person gains power over themselves, over their mind, and over their emotions. This is the power to be free and live a self-directed life, without being impacted by external forces.
Last night I opened the little vents on my tent on the top cuz it was warm before I went to bed. This wasn’t a good idea because it was the coldest night yet while sleeping outside. The cold seeped through the sleeping bag. I ended up putting my jacket on to keep me warm. With the gear I have I’m wondering how long it’ll be before it gets too cold to sleep comfortably outside.
6:00 a.m. I was up, it took me a while to roll out of the tent, and get ready for the day. By 7:30 a.m. Camp was all packed up so I headed and walked in my stuff up at the gym. I hung around the front of the gym for a while to charge my phone because they’re about to die, and my portable battery was on zero, so I had to charge that too.
9:00 a.m. I rode my bike over to the Salvation Army with my little pack. On the way I saw some people hanging outside of St John’s, which does breakfast early around 7:30 a.m. I spoke with them a little bit. One larger fella said he’s willing to play chess with me at the library. When I arrived at the salvation army breakfast there was a sausage patty, and little stick French toasts. It was dry and hard but I ate it, I was hungry. There’s definitely a large population of homeless people in Worcester. There’s a lot of drug addiction I’ve noticed. A lot of people that are homeless, or using drugs hang out at the library, and in the park near the library. I’ve minded my p’s and q’s, and kept to myself mostly until I have a better feel of the environment. I did sit next to a man at breakfast, I will not say his name, that I met the other day. I seem to run into him quite often. The lady that was working the door at the salvation army breakfast was saying to another person that they’re going to close down mustard seed, The place that serves dinners to the homeless.
9:30 a.m. I stopped at the recovery center called everyday miracles. It’s funded by spectrum, who’s probably funded by BSAS. They said I could charge my phones there. I ended up doing a check-in with everybody and filling out a survey which was way too long. In the check-in everyone just talked about how they’re doing in their recovery. It had a very 12-step feel to it. Lately I’ve been pretty vocal about dispelling labels like recovery, addict, alcoholic for myself. I identify as a person who struggled with addictions, overcame those addictions, and now doesn’t has an issue and is completely healed from past addiction. I shared that with the group, and it was well received. I have been vocal about my thoughts in some 12 step settings and I have been criticized. After all, I studied psychology, amongst other subjects, to understand my own mind, heal my own mind, understand the minds of others, and I worked diligently in addiction and behavioral health for the last 4 years providing great results for clients and training some of the best recovery coaches on earth, so there’s something to be said about that. I have no patience for people that are close-minded, and blindly stuff doctrine down other people’s throats.
10:30 a.m. I headed over to the library to charge my stuff and work on stuff on my phone. Like uploading videos, and transferring videos from TikTok to Instagram. The Bigger guy I met hanging outside the St John’s homeless breakfast didn’t show. A young Latin American kid who didn’t speak English wanted to play so I played him. He really didn’t know what he was doing, and I annihilated him. But it was good and he was a good sport.
12:30 p.m. I head over to the salvation army once again for lunch. There’s chicken, squash, and rice that was cooked in the oven and is all burnt and crunchy. A girl who is having a conversation with herself and acting erratically sits next to me. I wonder to myself if she is suffering from some drug-induced psychosis possibly from meth, or perhaps schizophrenia. I keep to myself and I’m on my phone. Eventually I ask her how the food is, and she says good. Another man sits down with us and the girl and the man have a conversation. The girl mentions not sleeping in days. I wonder to myself if she has been doing meth, and is suffering also from sleep deprivation. I finished my meal, and I say goodbye to my table companions. As I leave I ask the woman at the front door if they do showers at the salvation army. She says they do them at 8:30 a.m. This is a good thing, because I always feel a little weird when I have my big backpacking sack out while showering at the active and fit gyms.
1:30 p.m. I ride my bike back to the library and do some charging and phone stuff. No one shows up to play chess, and I get board. I look at the Bounce app, which tells you places where you can lock your stuff up for $6 for 24 hours. This benefits me because I have to lock up the bulk of my gear, mostly camping gear, during the day. It expands the area I can sleep beyond active and fit gyms. My lock spot has to be close to my sleeping spot. There’s one in town so I decided to ride my bike out there to see if there are any good camping spots.
3:00 p.m. I ride the bike out to the Bounce luggage lock spot area. It’s a 13 minute bike ride. There’s a park there and I explore that, there’s also a hiking hill and disc golf place so I explore that too. The area is hilly so I scrapped the idea of camping there. They should change the name of Worcester to Hilltown.
4:30 p.m. I take my time riding the bike back to the mustard seed dinner. I take a few cool pictures of churches on the way.
5:30 I ate dinner at Mustard Seeds. I sat with a heavy set man with long hair, and a skinny old man with a beard and a hat with feathers sticking out who wants to be called Old School. I strike up a conversation with these two interesting individuals. They tell me that they’ve been homeless for a while and are homeless activists. They say that the cops and DPW have been illegally destroying homeless people’s tents and harassing homeless people, until they fought back and got them to back off. The heavy set trans woman tells me that Old School has been homeless for 40 years. I’m interested in this. They tell me about the woods they are camping in and all the animals there. They even say there are wolves there. I suggest that I would really like to camp there. I also say I would like to get their story on film. They’re a bit skeptical, but Old School tells me where they are camping. Fingers crossed I can get that interview.
6:30 p.m. I go out to smoke a cigarette, and I hear one of the workers at the Mustard Seed say another worker got stabbed with a needle while taking out the trash.
6:40 p.m. I ride my bike back to the Gym and my camping site. I grab some Snickers and OJ at the grocery store for the night and morning especially if it gets too cold, the Candy Bars are good to fire up my metabolism. I worked on this blog for a while, and at 9:00 p.m. I go to bed. I am supposed to be meeting up with a friend of a friend who works in homeless services in Worcester at the St. Johns breakfast at 7:30 a.m. so sleep is important.
2:15 a.m. I am woken by rain. Everything is protected in my tent. The tent does a great job keeping me dry. I drift back off to sleep with the sound of the rain. One thing I always do is avoid camping at the bottom of hills. Runoff pools there, and even if it looks like a nice flat place to set up camp, if it rains hard, there’s a good chance you will get washed out.