Stalking my Scumbag Brother
Who says a 50-year-old man can't start over as a nomadic hippie monastic?
Here it is. Early June. I should have been prepping the family for a two-week-long hiking trip through Zion by now according to my absurd, aggressive timeline. It was a plan almost literally predicated on miracles.
Not surprisingly, instead we’re on the verge of being broke and homeless.
(Quick note to my amazing, generous, understanding and brilliant landlord, who is a reader and prime benefactor of this silly newsletter: Again, don’t worry about it. You’re doing a good thing for your loved ones. Plus, I get story out of it. It’s a win-win! Seriously, my friend, don’t worry about it. But I’m going to slightly exaggerate the circumstances for effect and amusement now, so please understand that I do, in fact, believe that life is good and full of wonderful, if unpredictable possibilities.)
Quick summary of recent events:
That even more corporate-y job I applied for? Didn’t get it. I’m “overqualified.” Might have dodged a bullet there, though. It was likely a small pay increase - a little extra-bag-of-groceries-per-month bump up, and the hiring manager was probably right - it would have bored me to tears in a few months.
The last of our savings is supplementing my current meager income, and we have to move by 9/1, but we won’t be able to afford a security deposit, much less rent, at that time, unless something major changes.
A third thing.
I try to come up with a realistic plan between all-day overtime shifts, but everything I come up with and attempt seems like the frantic neural activity of a dying mind - bursts of creativity featuring tunnels of light and astonishing intuitive leaps - but then the systems just…die.
For example: I sent samples of some of my leather work to a few “influencers” with the idea that I could quickly ramp up sales to supplement our income juuuuuust enough. One of these guys lives in my neighborhood, actually. Ever heard of the website, “Art of Manliness?” I thought about just sticking the package of sample bracelets into the founder’s mailbox, but decided that would be creepy. So, I mailed it through normal channels. I never heard from him.
Another influencer loved the leather bracelet I sent him and gave me a mention on his huge platform. I screwed that up by reaching out through my nearly dormant Twitter profile (I use a different one for branding and other serious work), so anyone who checked out my profile was underwhelmed, to say the least. That guy’s post got a few likes, but no follows or more importantly, sales. It’s early, but all indicators say “dud” at this point.
The third “influencer” isn’t anything of the sort. He’s my half-brother, and he doesn’t know I exist.
It’s sort of a long story, but here’s the short version: my biological father wasn’t in the picture - ever - for reasons both in and outside of his control. He went on to build a life elsewhere. I’d started digitally stalking my bio-dad decades ago, and even met him once on an impromptu stalker trip to Maine. Turns out he’s a decent guy, although a “coward” in his own words, because he’s not ready, willing or able to acknowledge me. (In his line of work, the revelation of my existence would be extremely awkward).
It was sometime during that time that I discovered I had a half-brother. He’s younger than me, I believe, but within ten years or so of my age.
I’ve never reached out to “Mark” because, hey, would I really want a mysterious half-brother to pop up out of nowhere to tell me my dad was a randy old goat in his younger years, and that maybe everything I thought I knew about my dad was a half-truth, at best? Gross. No. It’d be cruel. Totally disruptive.
Well, I ignored all that empathy or whatever it was and reached out to him anyway. Because eff it, I’m getting pretty damned tired of working around everyone else’s expectations, that’s why.
My half-brother has an Instagram page wherein he chronicles his climbing adventures throughout the country. It’s called “Secret Scumbags.” Actually, that’s a pseudonym, but it’s decent. He and his wife gutted a van and turned it into a mobile rock climbing vehicle complete with living quarters, stove, etc. It’s slick. (Or do the kids say things are “sick” now?) I don’t know what makes this kind of van different than a stalker van (and at this point, who am I to judge?), but they pull it off.
They travel from climbing spot to climbing spot, meeting new friends in this weird under culture that features plenty of fire circles and impromptu hippy concerts under the stars. I gotta say: after years of trying to fit my square peg into a round corporate hole, that life - that totally impractical, unrooted life - sounds pretty damn good right now. After fighting like hell for years to build a sensible life and evidently completely failing at it, yeah, I’m ready to live in an RV with five other humans and a huge dog for awhile. Maybe I’ll change my name to Wolfsbane. And have you met my wife Starlight and my kids, Tweezle, Ascension, Butterfly and Moon Buffalo?
The dog, Zelda, will remain “Zelda.”
I didn’t really expect anything from it, but I sent my half-brother a pic of some leather bracelets I’d made for his Instagram brand. In a DM, I asked him to tell me where to send the bracelets if he was interested. If he responded, I’d probably mention our shared lineage, or so the half-baked plan went.
He didn’t respond. In fact, I think he blocked me. It’s not easy to have this much winning in one life…
So, what’s this got to do with anything? Well, in my eternal search for a Point, I think it’s this:
SCREW EVERYTHING.
I mean that in the most gentle sense, of course. While my soul is ready to douse everything in kerosene and flick a wad of flaming magnesium onto it, I do have a family to think about. My bougie wife is mortified by our situation, but even she is so fed up with the futility of trying to build a life in this culture and economy that SHE is driving (sorry) the idea of hitting the road in an RV. That, or building an Orthodox commune in a former Soviet republic, as one does. (More on that in the next one, maybe).
In practical terms, here’s what “screw everything” means to me: I need, starting RFN, a serious and substantial amount of margin so I can drop all the hustle and Do The Thing I’ve known for years - decades, actually - what I should be doing. I can do it, and now that our situation is where it is, I must do it. It’s actually a relief.
So, depending on how the seventh interview at my current organization goes today, I might be moving my family to a monastery in about a month so that I can slow down, breathe, and actually rebuild.
More soon.
Don't give up on the half-brother yet. I mean, maybe, if you think you should. But I would be *thrilled* to be contacted by an older brother I never knew I had that wanted to get to know me. Beyond thrilled.
So where would you like the monastery commune? It does sound rather ambitious- the whole pray and work thing isn’t like the movies I hear- but at least we can brew our own concoctions, right?