It has been a long road to get where I am today. As I write this I am in Month 10 of my Self-Improvement crusade. I have aquired a wonderful, high-paying job. I have managed to unfuck myself mentally. I own insurance now. There are many things that I have done, and one of the major themes of this year has been reflection.
I believe I have always had the knowledge and the wherewithall to acomplish what I have now achieved. If I had started earlier I would likely be much, much farther along (though starting now I still hold to be a very good time to start, age 24.). Yet, why did I not start earlier? Why instead did I spend Age 19 to age 22 a nomadic crazy homless man with a computer?
The answer to that is rather simple: Paranoia.
I have spoken about my abuse before. I will likely talk about it again. Unlike the modern internet subculture of victim fetishism I have made efforts (and they have been succesful) to overcome this past horror. Yet, in the abuse as a child I had come to an illogical false conclusion: There were bad people who would try to find me.
Even if this was not a concious realization, it was always in the back of my mind. "e;Surely if I misbehave or misstep or misspeak the bad people will bring me back to the horror!" I would think subconciously.
As my days went on and I continued to grow while in the Second Phase of abuse, which was mostly an extreme shame for the things I went through in the first phase. I digress.
The main thing is that in 2014, which was right around the start of the Second Phase, a number of things entered my attention which truly disturbed me and I did not fully recover from until this year. The three primary things that occured were 1) having my own computer with unadulterated high-speed internet access for the fourth time in my life, 2) discovering the Free Software Movement through 4chan's /g/ and related IRC chatrooms, and most importantly 3) the discovery of the 2013 Edward Snowden Revelations.
For many years I had suspecte that there was significant ability for bad actors to monitor everything and everyone on the internet. When I discovered the Edward Snowden leaks a lot of what I knew to be possible was revealed to me as fact. I'm sure I'm not the only person to have had this happen. The Snowden Leaks gave every slightly-higher IQ person reason for extreme alarm. It was through that community I learned of many things, including the "Paranoid Anon" security guides, the way that cellphones actually work, the common-sense comments of Jaccob Appelbaum (who has since commited e-Death after the CIA started a disinformation campaign against him), and so forth.
The problem was also that I had recently moved away from the abusive situation into another, and with the shame from the first situation leading to fear in the second, I would remain very secrative about my own life, especially digital. Being a teenager posing as an adult online there are certinally things that you would desire to keep away from your parent (especially a parent who you had not been raised by and knew nothing about).
This process of paranoia started simpily enough. Some of it was anger. I began to use an email signature that said "Fuck the NSA" in my personal email. I began to use Tor and insist to use Free Software for the sole reason that it usually doesn't track. I deliberately destroyed my Windows Phone and vow'd never to use a cell phone again. I hardened my identity and began the process of eliminating as many metadata points as possible to my person.
This eventually became a significant factor in my self-confessed insanity of the past decade. I had no bank account, driver's license, cash card, and few online accounts in my real name. I had deliberate disinformation being submitted out at times, including a few fake LinkedIn accounts that I do not remember and have no access anymore. I had even considered publishing my own information online so identity theives would steal my identity to throw off a trail.
But the question was: the trail of who?
I had in this persuit convinced myself that I was a dissident likely worthy of InterPOL investigation at any moment. While most of what I believed at the time was likely true (for example, a belief that the NSA uses AI computers to process the metadata they collect, build up psychological dossiers, and then produce hitlists for agents trained to obey their computer) I was operating on the false notion that I needed to behave like Edward Snowden myself. I attempted to opt out of every service you could opt out of in society, including attempting on more than one occasion to forefit my Social Security Card (as many members of the Soveregin Citizen Movement claim is possible). In this persuit of opting out of societies pseudo-nessesitated services, I seem to have opted out of society itself.
My first real stride in overcoming this was opening a checking account and having a debit card. Having a bank account because an e-friend told me that he would wire me money for Christmas on the condition that I make one, I had chosen a credit union. I used cash and made near-daily withdrawls of ~$20/day. When I had my incredibly abrupt move to where I am now (which is out of state) I had needed to get a checking account and debit card because if I wanted money I had to spend an ATM fee of nearly $4 every transaction. This was January of 2021.
Now, through a number of slow but steady concessions, along with sobriety and the rest of the ongoing self-improvement persuit, I have re-entered society. I own stock, I own crypto that is not hidden from the Government, I have an up-to-date State ID, I have a 401(k), I have insurance, I am soon to have a passport (WOW!), I file taxes online instead of mailing a form to the IRS (or trying to figure out ways to prevent the IRS from even knowing who I am without success), I acknowledge that I have a Social Security Number, I have a cell phone (though I still keep it in a pocket faraday cage), and many many many more elements of what most people would describe as "normal".
I do not dismiss the dangers of The Great Satan, don't get me wrong. The Great Satan is still an evil enterprise. It is simply that I now know that metadata itself is not an evil. Like the Jainist who believes it better to opt-out of Karma and goes to extreme ends to achieve this goal, I attempted to opt-out of metadata. How well I did during this time I do not know, but in the present I think that much like with karma I am fine if my bank statement shows I spent $20 on a DVD on eBay.