Episode 10 is about picking myself up after hitting rock bottom and making a decision that almost everyone around me warned me against: going back to school to become a writer.

In this chapter, I talk about enrolling in basic education courses, feeling out of place, and slowly—sometimes painfully—starting to develop real skill and confidence in my craft. Friends and family thought it was impractical, unrealistic, or just another bad idea. I thought it was necessary. I believed in myself enough to do the work, even when the path forward felt uncertain.

Along the way, I deal with medical issues that threaten to derail everything, and I have to learn how to push through without pretending they don’t exist. I also explore a parallel journey—trying to learn how to hunt like my grandfather and uncle—as a way of reconnecting with where I come from and what resilience actually looks like.

The episode closes with graduation and a turning point: moving on to the next step of the journey, beginning my baccalaureate program at the University of Washington.

This is a story about stubborn belief, slow progress, survival, and choosing to bet on yourself when no one else would.

In this episode I discuss the struggle is about trying to build something when you have nothing—no money, no credit, no safety net. I talk about the constant pressure of running a business while broke, watching expenses stack up faster than hope, and living one small mistake away from collapse.

As the financial strain deepens, my marriage quietly unravels. My wife stops loving me, sees me as a failed provider, and begins a relationship with another man. At the same time, my grandfather dies from COPD, and the last pieces of stability disappear.

This episode ends at my absolute rock bottom—when everything I was holding up finally falls.

In the shadow of the 2008 recession, I lose my job and slide into a level of poverty I wasn’t prepared for. This episode covers survival—financial, emotional, and psychological. I talk about the violent death of my uncle in a police incident that left a permanent mark on me, and the pain and instability that followed. I move to Maple Valley, take any work I can find—from repairing windshields to day labor—and end this chapter at the edge of something new, deciding to start a landscape company just to stay afloat.