How True Minimalism Led to Stoicism

Below is a picture of everything I own. And actually I've downsized a bit in the 7 or so months since this was taken. Depending on how you count them there are less than 50 things here...now way less. 

Once upon a time I was married, owned a successful landscape design business, sold copious amounts of weed in Alabama at a really good clip, and had a nice house in a nice neighborhood that was filled to the brim with shit that I absolutely did not need.

Fast forward to about 8 years ago. My wife had left me, I couldn't afford the house on my own and I was forced to sell. On the day we finally closed on the house, it rained cats and dogs. All day. And the buyer, in her wisdom and kindness felt compelled to remove all of my worldly belongings into the front yard so that her painters could do their work. She somehow managed to wall up my power tools with her moving boxes....

As I stood there watching everything I own turn into rain soaked mush I began laughing. I just got into my truck and drove the rented trailer back to uhaul and drove my freshly minimalist ass halfway across the country to Austin Texas. Less than a year later I was in Colorado, I had sold my truck and given away the last of my nonessential items and began a long wandering journey that continues today.

One of my paintings that was destroyed that day:

You see, in the beginning this loss was one that seemed like the end of the world. But in reality, was probably the greatest thing to ever happen to me. I placed so much value on these things that my entire identity and sense of self worth were completely dependent on shit that essentially disappeared in a day; and I imploded. 

I'm sure the drugs, alcohol, and  complete Jim Morrison lifestyle really didn't help matters much either. I was falling in love with a stripper but she never really wanted just me. Colorado was hard and cold but it opened my eyes to a life I never imagined possible. 

I met a guy in south Denver one afternoon. It was dead cold but the weather had begun to turn recently making me think more and more about getting the fuck out of Denver and towards somewhere I didn't need to sleep in a homeless shelter or worry about getting knifed in the dark or my face bitten by ravenous red-eyed rodents.

He had close connections in the weed growing world and wanted to get something going, they just needed a whale of a customer or two. As it happened, I had close buyer connections in Alabama and Texas so we started negotiating. Before I knew it I was back in business. My connections from Austin sent up a driver that netted $50k in an afternoon. I made $5,000 for three conversations and an afternoon getting fucked up with a bunch of gangsters in a posh ass mansion in Cherry Hill Colorado. 

This guy was so picky about his stash that he had us run it all through big sifters to remove all the shake which came to just under 500g. He turned and handed me that bag and said "thanks" as we loaded the last of the pounds into his trunk compartment. 

Soon enough I reached out to my guys back home in Bama and they were frothing at the mouth for samples. Boom, another thousand on the green dot card and shit in the mail. Two days later I was sitting on orders over $20k and profit of around $8,000 for an afternoon's work. I found these three runaway kids in Denver that were young enough to claim youthful offender if anything happened to them. I ran background checks to be sure because they were all three very good at lying (which came in handy later once I had their loyalty).

I worked out the best possible way to get product to my customers while minimizing risk. I had three different post offices that I chose at random on delivery days. And I rotated who went where, meaning: one of the boys went to one of the post offices at random. Also I had 3 different safe houses near to the customer and friends that got a cut simply for handing off the unopened package. 

To thwart any sniffers or nosy lookers we asked around about postal procedure. What we learned was that they only have sniffers when there is suspicion of something illegal. And even then it's a federal crime even for officers to open another person's mail without probably cause so the just poke a hole in the box and let the sniffers check it. 

So after carefully cleaning our vacuum sealed bag with alcohol and removing it to another room it was placed into another bag and that one cleaned as well. Then the entire thing was wrapped in about an inch of newpaper because we figured there isn't a human alive that could punch through an inch of newspaper with just a sharpened stick. It added a fair bit to the weight but so what? What is an extra $40 in shipping when profit per package was around $2500-3000?!

The problem with drug money though is that you can't really invest it without laundering it somehow. And that involves exposing yourself to the government to some degree, fabricating clients, revenue numbers, tax exemptions, lawyers, accountants, tiles, licenses and fees, and blah blah bullshit. You might as well just run a legitimate business. 

So since we couldn't buy houses, or cars, or invest in any way, we lived like mother fucking rock stars...$10k trips to the strip club were at least a monthly occurrence. Little Mount Everests of cocaine were commonplace at our parties. It was full on debauchery, business as usual but without a missus slowing me down. It seemed to me that gangster life would last forever, but alas it wasn't to be. 

My grandfather died one day and I realized I hadn't been home in quite a few years, so I bought a ticket and went. I planned to stay a few weeks and rather than take an assload of cash back and raise questions, I just presold a bunch of weed (about $15k worth) and placed an order with my partner. 

A couple of days later I got a poorly wrapped package with less than $3k worth of product. What. The. Fuck.

I called him immediately, embarrassed as shit with my friends standing around also wanting to know where their money went.

I heard the lie in his voice immediately. He gave me some bullshit about stashing the money under his bed and some random dude seeing it. When he wok the next morning the box was gone. He claimed that he went to homeboy's house and razed it for everything valuable and bought what he could. Bullshit. I had murder on my mind.

The next part of the story must be omitted for safety reasons (mine and others) but what happened next compelled me to start hopping trains and leaving the grid altogether for the next 9 months. When I finally logged into facebook from another hobo's throwaway phone, I had a message from my ex partner inviting me back to Denver to get business going again. He had gotten his head out of his ass and wanted to make up for robbing me, blah blah bullshit. 

I read: Come back to Denver so we can torture and kill you, and bury your dismembered body in a barrel in the mountains where nobody will ever find you. Fuck that, I went back to Alabama. 

Those days are quite blurry to me. I worked a near endless series of deadend pointless jobs with exactly zero purpose in life and a dwindling desire to continue living. 

Soon enough I would leave that life and never look back.....until next time