Schizophrenia Disabled Man Seeks Grant Money For Photo Art Business

by Bryan
(Bellingham, WA, USA)

Good day. My birthday is on the 13th of July. I was 27 in 2011. I have been getting nowhere in life and for years now I have been living alone in the woods.

I have no children or spouse at this point and see no potential for change. I just flunked out of DeVry University for not being able to handle the workload and passing about half my classes.

I just have a hard time focusing as well as multitasking so by the time I got my classes changed to one per session I had already failed several classes.

Besides completely failing myself in school I have attempted to build a website (www.adropaday.net), which is fairly childish and has no direction.

I wanted to show off my favorite art and photos shot by friends and family. Then I was going to display my architecture designs I make with Google Sketch Up to try and show I can design for people.

Just yesterday I decided to change everything and started over. I want to have each page a different layout and style so maybe I can show off design ideas to web surfers and get a website building job. I have lots of potential I just don't have a mentor or a solid direction.

Schizophrenia is my disability. It really is odd to experience firsthand. I cannot help myself from talking to myself from many perspective angles all usually conflicting and needing a definitive choice to be made.

I get hung up until I have a pointed solution that consolidates the mess. My mind works in funny ways theses days. It has let go of a lot of its control. I find myself being startled and feeling disoriented momentarily.

Sounds are no longer preconceived by my ability to quickly recollect and/or assume based on current situation.

I find myself having intense bursts of adrenaline from opportunistic noises, noises I know that have a high potential for sounding off yet, for some reason they cause highly intense flashes of energy pushing me into a state of alert and paranoia.

The worst real world effect of my condition is when I walk around town, since I don't know anyone personally. I just wander about exploring and observing.

When I walk, I have several thought patterns flowing building and creating story lines and calculating outcome potentials for scenarios in which I find myself presented in real time deciding which social game to play and how far to take it.

When looking and exposing myself to game scenarios I get swarmed with varying perceptions on how and why to go about my actions and words based on my desired results for each and weighing them on my scales of statistics in which provide me with how likely I am to succeed at each game.

I mix all that data together and cross reference with my desire to actually go through the paces of just pass and keep walking until I find the right mixture of courage and statistical motivation being fueled by desire to act and engage in social games.

I feel like I spend all my time thinking of what to do and never actually get anything done.

I just keep thinking myself in and out of all kinds of ideas never having money to follow any given one I just move to the next brainstorming and starting a new plan that gets nowhere.

I have moved in the woods because my mind won't quit when I'm surrounded by opportunity for mental games. My lack of focus and constant building of scenarios is a byproduct of not having a direction or support.

Currently I am not able to live in a house, apartment or any other building. I get $668 a month to live on.

That isn't enough for rent. If it was, where would my electric bill money come from, water, sewage, garbage?

I can't afford any of that and expect to be able to eat, buy toilet paper, socks, propane for stove top, water treatment capsules from REI to prevent sickness, batteries for lamp and radio.

My entertainment is iPad. Internet is $25 for 2 GB, Netflix website fees.

I have a Honda I just got last week for my birthday but it needs a new motor so it's just sitting.

My medication is about $200 for 6 months and I just don't see myself spending $200 out of my $600 any given month.

I find myself eating very little by the end of the month when I spend large chunks of money at a time.

I take care of my mom as much as I can. She doesn't have income so I got her phone turned on for her so she can call someone if she needs help.

I got her TV back on so she doesn't just sit in her trailer doing crosswords all day.

I feel bad that I turned out to be a failure and have to watch my mom suffer.

I really do want to succeed. I just need a helping hand to get me going. I have all the emotional drive I need to get the job done but everything I want to do costs so much money and I just can't find a way to make it work.

In my life I have always been poor. I come from poverty. My mom was on her own and I have never known or met my real father, not ever.

So I grew up with her jumping from man to man over the years and she ended up with no one wealthy and thus I was living in corrupt and unethical parts of society.

I had a paper route when I was about 9 or 10 for a year and moved to doing landscaping for friends of the family and painted a few houses until I was 14ish.

I was about 15 when I started busing tables at a country club, then washing dishes, then making pizza, subs, and more dishwashing and making pizza.

At about 18 or so I worked roofing for a summer and moved to pressure washing roofs moss and dirt. I built decks and additions for houses.

By the time I was 23 I had found a girl and after the 3 years was up she left me locking me out of the house and telling me I have nothing here for me anymore and to just leave.

I respected her and left. I lost everything: car in the garage, furniture, clothes, money in the safe, cameras computers everything.

This is when I lost it and started sleeping in the woods. Soon after, my car died and I was on foot.

I had nothing, nowhere to go, I got on food stamps and started spending a lot of time alone.

Years now have gone by and I still walk, eat, think and live alone for the most part.

I found myself becoming delusional. I started building mental understandings not normal to everyday life.

The world became a living thing that could be played with and learned from; it was alive flowing with life.

I started to see the world as an extension of myself, tiny fragments of one whole, thus I am connected to all, communication is fluent and ever constant.

I started letting the world guide me with its actions and experiences all of which tells a story and points to a future.

So for months I walked learning how to listen to the earth following its cues, acknowledgements and disapprovals.

Signs and signals throughout the world are pointing and talking, telling us all the proper way to live and act, but hardly anyone is listening to Mother Earth.

This was about the time when I talked to someone about what I was experiencing and they told me I had developed schizophrenia from my long periods of being alone.

They got me on Supplemental Security Income I think and it has been my only income for the last 5 years plus, I haven't been on it that long only since last year, but before I had no income so I just added the time with no income to when I got on SSI.

I would like to see my standard of living improve and currently is near unbearable.

What I really need is a boost of finances so I can start selling art on my website and at farmers markets, maybe galleries and hopefully become successful.

I know asking for a boost to get a home is unreasonable because I won't be able to afford bills and rent with what I am receiving.

I would feel good inside if I could get enough to fix my car or get a better one and have money for art supplies and a nice camera and have some money for producing my oil painting photo combo.

I would feel like I'm actually spending my time being productive and finding a place to pour my feelings and emotions into while making myself happy.

I don't know what I need other than food, water and shelter. Those are needs and those thing I have, tent, food, 5-gallon jugs of water.

So, what I want is a grant. Since it is not necessary to survival, I consider it a want.

I see a grant or loan as a sort of boost to get me out of the woods with dignity, and respect for myself.

I don't want to go back to the world and be asked what I have done with my time and have nothing to tell them except I was out there looking for my mind.

If I can't get some kind of help, someone to lend me a hand I don't think I'll ever leave the woods. I'll probably just live and die in the forest.

Art, photos, website. I have several ideas, but the one that I like the most is the art. I am going to take beautiful photos with something like a Nikon DSLR and have them printed twice, once on glossy photo paper and the other on large 4-foot canvas from Costco.

I am then going to use thick heavy oils to create depth, brush strokes and style, frame both the oil painting and the picture.

Since I can't paint that well I had devised this method, having the photo printed on the canvas before painting.

It gives you a great pallet to start from and when you're done no one will know that your painting was once a picture. Kinda like coloring books but for the creative thinker.

So I figure I can redesign my site (www.adropaday.net) into a drop in for art I'm selling.

Who knows, the key is that with the picture painting thing I can hopefully feed myself and stay positive about life and my time here.

Maybe someone could help me build my site up to be somewhat productive to provide residual income for myself?