Any resemblance to individuals ruling or ruled should be taken with a grain of salt. All of the events he has described herein that actually happened, actually happened, though he has made changes to the chronology and factuality.
Truth be told, this document isn’t a manifesto. It’s an unfinished manifesto. Certain demographics don’t seem to expect genuinely completed and tested products anymore. For example, people purchase and play video games still in their Alpha stages of development. The pharmaceutical companies put aside vast sums in the event that one of their rushed products, which usually treats a designer ailment, causes death or severe complications to both patients and investors. Everything is rushed now. Why should books be any different? Is this the first unfinished book you ever purchased? He doubts it.
He has, thus far, lived what he would characterize as an interesting life. Of course, his journey isn’t necessarily more or less interesting than yours, but it has been interesting enough. And to be sure, much of what he finds interesting about his own experience is similarly experienced by the vast majority of individuals who grew up middle class in big city Ontario. So, while interesting, his various experiences are not entirely unique.
He was born in Toronto. His pre-pubes-youth was youthy. When he was four or five he’d wake up well before Saturday morning cartoons were on TV to watch The AG Report; a weekly hour-long recap of the exciting world of Canadian agribusiness. He wasn’t obsessed with the world of agriculture; he just woke up early. He played Mario and Duck Hunt in his basement bedroom and met the gang from the neighborhood for road hockey and to get into mischief. He went through trading card and comic book phases, and he may have hit his brother in the head with a hammer. Life before high school was fine.
High School is when social constructs and expectations from peers really kick into gear.
He attended Catholic school because his family did and he liked the idea of wearing a uniform. He just didn’t give a fuck about fashion. His peers could still, and did, judge him based on his shoes, backpack, hell, even lunch quality, but having to wear a uniform reduced the number of ways he could be judged; especially from afar.
During high school, he did not attend one dance and he didn’t go to his graduation ceremony.
High school seemed, at the time, to be so complicated (it was sexless and awkward) and often wretched, but looking back he is convinced that it was pretty god damn normal. He’s got plenty of stories to tell, that is true, but the stuff he wrote back then is embarrassingly bad. Really horrible. He is consoled by the fact that a lot of people are also embarrassed about what they wrote when they were young and angsty teens. That said, he does not regret writing when he was young.
With high school checked off the to-do list he moved to Ottawa to get university over with.
University is when resistance to social constructs and expectations from society really kick into gear.
During half a decade of university he smoked grass, read Marx, made music, shot street, hated everyone, and saw ghosts in line for the bathroom in the techno room. He also did some studying and graduated with a degree in Political Science, a minor in History, and a concentration in Comparative Politics. He didn’t attend his graduation ceremony.
University was, at the time, so lonely (it was sexless), but when he thinks back, that free and easy life was pretty good. There are plenty of stories to be told, that is true, but most of the stuff he wrote back then was straight up shite. Really horrible stuff. Idealistic hogwash heaped atop self-absorbed nonsense. He is consoled by the fact that he is sure this is true of many his age thinking about what was written when they were young adults slowly coming to terms with the fact that their entitled lives were soon entering a new and more demanding stage. He does not regret writing when he was a young adult.
With a new degree, he moved out of his apartment in Ottawa and back to his mom’s in Toronto.
There is something to be said about cocaine use among a number of his Toronto friends at the time, but, cocaine is really boring so let’s move on. Within a few weeks of being back in Toronto hanging out with pals who were coke curious, a friend of his called him up from Seoul, Korea.
He’d called to find out if he wanted to teach at the English academy he was employed at. His pitch was simple and his questions were few. He didn’t even ask for time to think about it. He figured, what the hell, and seven sleeps after speaking with his friend he was on a flight to Seoul and a life of expatitude. That was 2002.
The career that ‘should’ have materialized after university hadn’t materialized. Truth be told, moving to Korea offered him the opportunity to game the system for quite some time.
If you are content earning a couple grand a month, and it allows for a generally comfortable standard of living, it’s easy to just ignore a career. Nevertheless, more than a decade has passed and he is still always without savings and his debts aren’t any less daunting. He doesn’t necessarily lament the fact that he didn’t figure out a career path earlier in life, but there certainly are increasing levels of anxiety and stress that arise whenever he gives the subject some thought. Not everyone is a go-getter.
He is currently a stay at home dad who mildly enjoys it. If nothing changes his tombstone will read “Should have been more successful”.
It is certainly refreshing that more and more people are giving serious thought about drug policy and the negative effect that the criminalization of narcotics is having on society.
Egalitarian shifts cannot truly begin until society comes to a much more open attitude toward narcotics and resists the urge to wage war on them.
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