When I was 6 I wanted to write a science fiction novel about Transformers but didn’t know how to read so I had to ask my mom how to spell every word. I got maybe two sentences into it before giving up and deciding to wait until I could spell. It took ten years for me to get back to it.
My parents let me watch a Nazi documentary. I remember seeing actual footage of a German police officer shooting a small child through the head in front of her mother. I had two of the greatest parents I ever could have hoped for, partially because they did not hide the harsh truths of the world from me.
[[What you’re reading is my life in snippets. I found this while reading back through my 2022 journal.]]
I got in a fight with my cousin. He slammed me against the wall, choked me and held a hammer over my head as I begged for my life. He promised he would be a police officer someday and would kill me if I ever talked about this. He did become a police officer and I’m still scared of him.
Soon I wanted to become a police officer myself. I had countless elaborate fantasies about torturing and killing people for things like jaywalking or doing drugs. I especially hated drug dealers and wanted them to suffer.
At some point in childhood I realized the entire point of the human race is to spread life to other planets. This means the space industry is the most important thing in the world. I have always intrinsically known this as an inherent truth and I don’t know where it started.
One day in fifth grade, a classmate argued vehemently against NASA, saying it should be entirely shut down and space travel was stupid and pointless. I nearly had a meltdown. It was one of the most horrifying things I’d ever heard and I think it made me shut down and hide my love for space travel. I lost my faith in humanity that day but instead of talking about it, I hid from the issue, which was definitely a recurring toxic behavior of mine.
I watched Ghost starring Demi Moore with my parents and became terrified I was going to hell. I started praying to God when I had never prayed before. I prayed every night for weeks until one night, God spoke to me, told me He had big plans for me, that I was going to change the world with my unique views on life, but that I had to become an Atheist. “I am nothing but a figment of your imagination,” God told me. So I stopped believing in God, not that I really had before.
My middle school was very conservative and rather redneck. The bullying was brutal. I lived every day in fear of the violence. Became super depressed, coming close to suicide a couple times.
My parents got divorced and I moved to a liberal high school where there was virtually no bullying at all. It was like heaven compared to middle school.
Freshman year I went tubing down the Nooksack river. Got sucked under a pile of logs. My life flashed before my eyes and I realized I was not happy with who I was. The river spit me out on the other side of the log jam. I saw the most vivid colors I had ever seen and my attitude toward life changed forever. And no, the thought of God never once crossed my mind throughout the entire experience.
Read a book called The Kingdoms of the Wall by Robert Silverberg that again changed me on a fundamental level. People call this book Atheist propaganda, which I suppose is fair, but it laid reality out for me like I never saw before and made me feel genuinely comfortable with who I am as a non-believer. It also spoke of the moral reasons for humans to explore the galaxy. The story was so intense, I kept telling myself “They’re not real. It’s just words on a page.” Over and over I said that to myself to calm myself down. And I had a revelation: “I can make words on a page too.”
Started writing my first novel, which I called “Return from Freedom”. Kept it secret from everyone.
Started writing a journal. Wrote in that almost daily from mid sophomore year to the end of my first quarter of college.
Gave up my first novel. Started writing a different novel called “The Journey”, which I also kept secret but gave up on after a few months.
Dedicated my life to becoming a writer of science fiction.
Got a job as soon as I was 16 and have not been unemployed for more than 6 months total in my whole life. I can’t stand being unemployed.
I also did some pumpkin stealing, throwing water balloons at random pedestrians, skiing behind a car, riding on top of a car at 55 miles per hour (just that once), and I even got arrested for mailbox bashing. Through most of high-school I was simultaneously dedicated to getting a good education and also to undermining authority. Sometimes those two goals clashed and sometimes they worked together.
Fell madly in love with a girl but we broke up. I blamed her for everything, but looking back I realize I was the toxic one. I was devastated for many years.
Started Creative writing class Junior year. Started writing short stories and finally had real success.
Got drunk for my first time at 18. Opened my eyes to new ways of looking at life and interacting with people. I made an ass out of myself but overall it was a massively positive experience.
Tried marijuana. Quickly realized it made my depression and anger go away so I soon started doing it all the time. Never stopped.
Moved out of my parents house on graduation day.
Tried mushrooms and they quickly became a central aspect of my identity. Taking mushrooms (in carefully controlled, safe and supportive environments) was one of the best choices I ever made. They made me a better, happier, more successful, more compassionate, more understanding person. It wasn’t magic of course. I did it myself, but the shrooms opened the door for me.
Became a marijuana dealer, the very thing I hated most as a child. Sold weed regularly for about 10 years.
One day I went to a Metallica concert and took some mushrooms as I often did at concerts. Afterward I met a US Marine who had just won a purple heart. I mentioned that I am a pacifist and that I don’t support the military because I believe it causes more war and violence than it prevents. He ordered me to hang out with him for the rest of the night so he could get to know me. I refused so he threatened to kill me. He told me he could kill me with his bare hands and I believed him because he was built like a tank, moved like a ninja, and could cause excruciating pain just by poking me in the right place. He held me hostage in the middle of a raging Metallica after-party as I was coming down off shrooms and told me about the dozens of people he’d assassinated as a Marine, and bragged about how he felt no remorse even though they were all technically innocent. He told me killing another human being is a high better than sex and that I should find a way I could get away with it legally.
I am still a pacifist and I still do not support the military.
One day I smuggled LSD into Canada just because I wanted to get high with my ex-girlfriend at a Counting Crows concert. This isn’t actually significant. It’s just an example of the kind of person I was. I really only have one regret, and smuggling LSD into Canada is definitely not it.
I got arrested for selling 3 ounces of marijuana to an undercover police officer in 1999. They pulled a gun on me. I stared down the barrel to see the officer’s finger twitching against the trigger. I later asked Officer Mark Stokes, who had arrested and pointed the gun at me, how he could morally justify putting people in prison for a plant that’s never killed anyone and he said words that are permanently etched into my memory: “Let me explain something to you, Kalin. Cops don’t care about right and wrong. How could we? We wouldn’t be able to do our jobs if we did.”
I also talked to the Bellingham Chief of Police, asking him if pointing a gun at people might traumatize them to the point they actually commit more crime in the long run. He replied, “Cool! Sounds like job security to me.”
Long story short I flipped and worked with the police but quickly realized police behave like Sopranos characters. Working with the police for that short period is my one genuine regret in life. Nearly a quarter century later I still have to accept that it’s a negative mark on my character.
I went to jail for 28 hours. Everyone was super nice. Like all the other inmates were super supportive emotionally and the guards were almost all kind and apologetic, as though they understood somehow that I’d done nothing wrong and they were actually the bad guys. I can think of countless times I’ve been treated worse by cashiers at stores. It was a trip. Not at all what I expected. Bellingham is an interesting and really cool city.
The next day at my arraignment neither my defense nor the prosecutor had taken the time to read my file but they still let me out without bail.
Before and after my turn I watched dozens of other human beings having their futures decided by three people who had not read any of their files or knew even the first thing about them. They took a matter of seconds to decide the fate of each person. It was one of the most cold-hearted things I have ever witnessed.
A man was being charged with murdering his own daughter. I watched the prosecutor pretty much admit that the guy was likely innocent and say, “I think I can get a conviction anyway.” Defense was like, “You’re only prosecuting him because he looks intimidating, has dark skin, and speaks poor English!” Prosecutor grinned and said, “I’m not doing anything illegal.”
My lawyer told me you automatically get reduced sentences if you hire a lawyer as opposed to a public defender. It’s not that paid lawyers are “better”; it’s that they have different pre-baked agreements with prosecutors. Paid lawyers automatically get lower sentences than public defenders. It’s essentially a guarantee.
The police also arrested an associate of mine and I believe (though I admit I don’t have solid evidence) they tried to manipulate him into attacking or killing me by telling him a bunch of lies about me. I was attacked and pretty badly beaten one night (though my attacker broke his fist on my head and had to go to the emergency room, while I went home with my girlfriend). But we had a mutual friend who talked to both of us so I was able to get their side of the story to hear about the lies the police had told him.
While still waiting for my pending trial, the day before my 21st birthday, in a completely unrelated situation at a Phish concert, I watched a police officer beat a pale white naked man to death while he begged for his life (at least I think he died. He looked dead. I have no way of knowing.) He was like five feet in front of me. I watched the officer frame him for resisting arrest. Another officer choked me and shouted “Get the fuck out of here or that’s going to be you!” So I got out of there.
I spent 20 years struggling with the PTSD from this incident, too terrified to talk about it. 20 years I spent living in terror of the very people who are supposed to keep us safe.
I almost immediately started believing in God. The emotional trauma somehow forced me into it. I started praying every day. God started speaking to me.
God told me to go back to my original story idea, The Return From Freedom. Six months later I had written my first novel, which I called This Desert Life. It was not a good book, but I put it online for free and many people emailed me saying that it changed their lives because of all the new ideas it presented about life.
God also asked me to take a true leap of faith: total honesty. He told me to make a website where I use my real name, talk all about selling marijuana, and refuse to stop. God told me to challenge the police to come arrest me and promised they would not come after me so long as I followed one rule: don’t give the police any way to profit from your arrest. If the police have no way of turning a profit from your arrest, they will never arrest you. This is why police deliberately ignore rape and virtually any crime committed against a poor person. I called this website Get to Know a Marijuana Dealer.
One day I smoked some pot inside the Bellingham police station in front of a video camera with a friend. We left a note with a bud taped to it saying we had smoked pot there and used our real names and I gave a link to my website. The police didn’t care. My prosecutor got wind of this and read through my website. She found it funny. It didn’t change my case at all because of course, they don’t actually care about the morals of the situation. They didn’t even disagree with me. They only cared about their paycheck.
We finally got to my trial and all I did was some community service, some fines and five years later some cash to take it off my record.
I re-started my second novel, The Journey. I finished it a couple years later but it had issues and didn’t go over as well as This Desert Life.
God was talking to me more and more during this time, but I was also sinking into another depression resulting from reliving the naked man being beaten. I heard his screams in the back of my mind every night as I tried to sleep. Talking to God was a way to numb the pain. But God started telling me to do increasingly creepy things, until eventually He told me to kidnap and terrorize someone similar to what had happened to me with the Marine. But I just couldn’t go through with it and I remember screaming at God during one prayer session because I just disagreed with God and God responded by telling me that He was not real and was only a figment of my imagination. “I want you to stop believing in me and don’t ever come back to this.” It was within a few days that my mind just kind of switched back to Atheism and I was never again a God believer.
Around this time I also decided I should change my sexual orientation. I just didn’t like being straight. Being totally and completely hetero sexual is just boring and wasn’t who I wanted to be, even though I had never had a single gay fantasy. I realized so many aspects of our culture are lies, what if “you’re born with your sexual orientation and it can’t be changed” is a lie too? So over the course of five or ten years I carefully worked on my attitudes and I deliberately changed myself from hetero to bisexual, which I now refer to as “pansexual”.
On Halloween 2001 or 2002, I was walking home from a party late at night and a police officer started following me for a block or two, just shining a light on me but refusing to respond to me when I tried to talk to him. Then suddenly he jumped out, pointing a gun at me, screaming, accusing me of stealing a DVD player. Again I stared down the barrel of a gun to see an officer’s finger trembling against the trigger. I showed him my ID and he called it in. A few moments later he realized I was not the guy he was looking for. I just started trembling in terror and couldn’t move. In response to my trauma the officer lunged at me, raised his fist and screamed “Get the fuck out of here!” That’s all I remember. I blacked out and woke up at home in a zombie-like trance. I spent two days in that trance, unable to laugh or feel emotions of nearly any kind. I don’t remember what got me to snap out of it.
One day a friend told me she had been fantasizing about me, that she had always secretly wanted me. She desperately wanted to have sex with me so we did. I found out later it was a lie. She was trying to trick me into getting her pregnant so she could use the baby to manipulate her parents into buying her a car. I don’t know if I have ever felt more violated.
One day a friend (the same one I was tubing with when I was sucked under the pile of logs) told me he was going back to school for web design and in a split second, on a total random whim, I made a life decision and said, “why don’t I go with you and do that too?” That’s how I started my career.
Some random weird dude emailed me one day claiming to be some big-shot author. He had read The Journey, and wanted to give me pointers. He said he was super famous but refused to tell me who. He said I had great potential but needed to clean some things up. He had a lot of advice that I wrote off as nonsense. I was sure he was just a poser. Found out later it was Terry Brooks, author of Magic Kingdom for Sale and Sword of Shannara. Maybe that’s my second regret: not respecting Terry Brooks and throwing away his email address.
[[So that’s my life, up until around 2006 or so. Looks like I had to go to bed or something so I just stopped there. Most of my career happened after that. Moved to Seattle, bought condo, worked in advertizing, then worked in porn then lost job, moved to Texas, moved to Pittsburgh to work for BNY Mellon, fell in love with Pittsburgh despite my many complaints it. Read 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson which introduced me to the whole genre of self-help books. Became obsessed with self help ever since then. Started building CustomD.app, my pride and joy as far as software goes. Got into buying rental properties. Joined the local kink community. Black Lives Matter came around and saved me from my 20+ years of police brutality PTSD. Finally had the courage to tell my story thanks to them. Found a place and emotional outlook here in yinzerville that truly feels like I belong, that this is where I am meant to be and this is where I can build something bigger than myself, to fulfill that mission that God asked of me when I was like 12. Goal now is to speak out in the name of peace and freedom, empathy and kindness.]]