What is this site? Who are you?

Domain names are relatively cheap and one night, on a whim, I noticed SurvivePoverty.com hadn’t been bought yet, so I bought it. At the time, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to do with it, but I’ve spent about a third of my adult life homeless and I had some idea that I might be able to use the domain to educate others about poverty.

I live a privileged version of poverty because I was born in the United States. Poverty here can be pretty wealthy compared to most places on the planet. (Also, my skin is white and it’s been impossible not to notice what a difference that makes in one’s safety and comfort when living homeless in the U.S. It’s time to dismantle racism.)

Right now, my poverty looks like living in a car as I migrate around the continent, both to take advantage of seasonal weather more suitable for semi-outdoor living and to avoid wearing out my welcome in any particular town. In some places, I’ve found it safe to stay longer, but in most places, I try to move to another area after about a week. (Sooner if authorities request it, of course.) It’s not the easiest life but it’s not very hard most of the time, either.

I’ve spent another third of my life in school, living on student loans, because I love learning and poverty sucks. I became disabled during my attempts to make it through graduate school. Last year Nelnet dismissed my student loan debt in exchange for three years of financial monitoring. If I want fifteen years of student loans to stay dismissed, I’m not allowed to earn above the poverty threshold for three years.

That three-year vow of poverty shouldn’t be too difficult: I started a business roughly seven years ago and I’m sure the IRS is filing it as a hobby by now because it’s never pulled more than a few thousand dollars per year at peak performance. Mainly, other than student loans, I’ve lived on SSI supplemental disability income.

I have hopes and dreams, though. The debt dismissal lit a small fire under me, here in my world of failed, decaying, late-stage capitalism. There is monetizable work I want to do. There are pathways to low-income home ownership. I could build a comfortable, modest life if I patiently work toward it.

So I’m taking the next two years of mindful poverty as an opportunity, a focused life mission: honing myself through stoicism, self-discipline, and steady work. My goals in 2023 and 2024 are to work a lot, write a lot, walk a lot, take care of myself, learn new things, pay attention, meditate, and give back to the world around me.

That’s where this site comes in.

The aim here is to get a shoestring budget podcast up and running. My goal is to interview interesting folks I meet over the next couple of years: people who identify as living in poverty. I’d like to talk to them, interview them for the podcast, and ask them about their views on the world.

And as the title says, I want to know: how do you survive poverty? That’s a divergent question because we all have our own ways to survive. Some folks thrive. I’ve seen people fully blossom in poverty. None of this makes poverty a good or noble thing. All it says is that the human spirit is a weed, coming up green from every crack in the system.

I learn a lot when I listen to people. I’m hoping some of them will agree to let me record our conversations so I can bring y’all along with us and we can all learn what it sounds like to survive poverty.

So that’s who I am and what this site is. I hope you come back. If I can figure this tech stuff out, I’ll set up an email list so I can let people know when I release new episodes. Otherwise, pretend it’s 1995 and bookmark this site. What can I say? All that schooling and none of it was in computer science.