On January 1, 2025, I officially launched the ISIT Awareness System (ISITAS) project by recording a set of presentations on Zoom. There were no other attendees, and the presentation was rather casual for such a significant event. But I did it. And that was me planting the ISITAS flag.
Following that launch, I made a series of blog posts on the Mentor’s Metamorphosis blog for a few weeks, but around the end of January, I was let go from my job, which spun my life into turmoil, and combined with the fact that no one was reading my posts anyway, I quit writing blog posts after 2/15.
To say that I was in a financial crisis is a gross understatement. I was already a financial basket case despite my (barely) six-figure income. The details behind how I arrived in this predicament are far too extensive to explain here, so I’ll just summarize by saying that I was born and raised in a working-class family and never had money growing up. I spent my 20s and 30s trying to start entrepreneurial ventures, with no financial success. Then I started a family at 40 and began my career working for Silicon Valley high-tech startups, which involved multiple layoffs over the years in the wake of crises like the DotCom bubble pop, 9/11, the Great Recession, and Covid.
At 48 I got divorced and had to move away from my two precious daughters. My ex-wife was not economically viable, so I ended up basically supporting two households for over 15 years in an area where most families need two incomes to support a single home. Consequently, I had been carrying a massive debt burden every step of the way, but was finally making some headway against it when the most recent ax fell with my job.
I sprang into action to try and restore my income, but my efforts were futile. Landing my last job as a Digital Marketing Manager in my 60s was a miracle. The job that I was long typecast as is generally held by people in their 20s, or maybe 30s, and no company was looking to hire someone in their sixties for such a low-level position. I knew that my career in the high-tech industry was toast.
The advice from my siblings was clear and strong: If you can’t get a job in your established field, then you have no choice but to get a job working for a big box mart or drive for Uber or Amazon. But I knew that wasn’t going to work for me.
First, while a six figure income barely allowed me to support my family and myself, $50K/year wasn’t going to cut it.
Second, I knew that having to work full-time+ doing service work would leave no significant time to work on ISITAS, and that was a top priority for me.
The bottom line at that point was that I simply could not afford to pay rent anywhere, let alone in the Bay Area.
I immediately started taking early social security, which allowed me to remain in my apartment for a few months while I figured out my next move. During this time frame, my oldest sister passed away. She lived in Mexico along with my aging brother in law. It was decided that me going to stay in Mexico to keep him company was a good idea.
I was still on a lease with my apartment, so I had to scramble to find someone to sub-lease the apartment. Luckily, I was able to find two summer interns to sublease it. So on May 1, 2025, I bid farewell to my beautiful daughter and flew down to Alamos, Sonora to stay for a while.
Shortly after I arrived in Mexico, my friend Rich told me that the meme coin they had launched was blowing up. I spent a few weeks diving into the meme coin space, trying to figure out a way to capitalize on the project myself. But within a few weeks that project had imploded, as they all do, and I was left wondering what my next move would be.
This was an incredibly emotional time for me, as I was experiencing the total collapse of my life, separated from my daughter, and with absolutely no support or even interest in the project that meant everything to me. I was processing deep, ancient wounds — feelings of being misunderstood, ignored and abandoned.
My sister’s home in Alamos is a very nice hacienda, and I spent at least an hour a day just floating in the pool, throwing a ball at the handrail on the stairs. It was just a kind of meditative activity I did as I pondered the circumstances of my life.
I would have spontaneous crying jags almost every day as I reflected on the futility of all my actions over the course of my life, and the yawning chasm between my lofty visions and the harsh reality of my circumstances — all accented by the indifference of my support system.
I come from a large family of 10 siblings, and we have traditionally had a big family reunion around the 4th of July at my brother’s house in Oregon. This year’s event would be particularly significant because the oldest of the siblings had recently passed away. As the date was approaching, I increasingly felt an overwhelming feeling of resistance.
By June, between all the scrambling around I had to do and the meme coin distractions, I hadn’t made much progress on ISITAS, but my mental and emotional commitment to the project was only growing. But I knew that, to the extent that my siblings and extended family cared at all about it, their feelings toward it could probably best be described as irritation that this quixotic quest was distracting me from what they considered my only practical course of action, which was to get a job — any job.
I didn’t have the funds to pay for my travel from Mexico to Alamos anyway, as the only funds I had were earmarked for the rent I was expected to pay for my lodging in Mexico. So on June 18, I sent a long email to my family sending my regrets that I wouldn’t be able to attend the family reunion. In this email, I felt compelled to express my feelings about my situation vis-a-vis my family. I told them that I didn’t feel like any of them had any sense of who I actually am or what makes me tick, or to the extent that they did, they certainly didn’t appreciate it.
Instead, they just wanted to see me conform to the family standards. We are working people who are competent and practical, and our life goals are to build a comfortable and secure life with some hobbies we can enjoy and be proud of. We aren’t about changing the world — we are about making a place in the world as it is and enjoying ourselves in the process.
I told them that since their approach to my very essence was disapproval and discouragement, in such a fragile position, I couldn’t bring myself to be surrounded by that energy.
I didn’t receive much response to that email. No one tried to talk me out of it. But then, a few days later, the plumbing in the hacienda totally failed — no running water whatsoever. The place was unlivable. We brought in construction workers who informed us it was going to take weeks to fix. I took that as a pretty clear sign that I couldn’t stay there, and that I should just go and face my family.
So I used the rent money to pay for a flight to Oregon and hung out on my brother’s humble country estate as my family gradually showed up for the family reunion.
It was a weird experience for me, because while my life and persona were disintegrating, my family just kind of ignored it. I think maybe they felt like I was trying to draw attention to myself when the death of our sister was the focal point of our reunion. None of this was overt. I just received the unspoken message that no one was interested in talking about my issues, and I kept it to myself.
Other than reminiscing about our sister, my siblings discussed their various home improvement projects, the activities of their kids and grandkids, current events, politics, etc. I tried to participate, but I just couldn’t bring myself to be interested in the same stories I’ve been listening to for decades. I wandered off and spent a good deal of my time by myself, away from the crowd.
I did have one-on-one conversations with everyone over the course of the weekend, and I apologized for my lack of participation. They accepted that, and acknowledged that I was in a difficult situation. But it was all so surface level. The deeper significance of what I was going through seemed utterly lost on them.
On the surface, we were all good. And I still needed somewhere to rest my bones until I returned to San Jose in September to take possession of my apartment from the interns and wrap up my lease. So I arranged to stay at some of my siblings’ homes in Oregon and Washington for the remainder of the summer, which I considered an opportunity to maintain my bonds with them.
My stays with them over the summer were pleasant. I got along fine with everyone wherever I stayed, in spite of a couple situations where I expressed my feelings to brothers who were particularly insensitive and obtuse. But even those blow-ups were quickly resolved. I know and they know that our family bonds are very tight, and no matter how much damage is done, we are good.
Meanwhile, I was constantly trying to figure out a way to earn money by leveraging my unique gifts and talents. I had just reached a point where I was unwilling to throw my energy down the black hole of corporate interests for a measly amount that wouldn’t even allow me to survive. I spent a considerable amount of time working on another entrepreneurial project in my real-life that I hoped could garner some support. But as usual, nothing materialized around that.
In early September, I returned to San Jose. By this time it was clear that I wasn’t going to be able to come up with enough money to pay off the remainder of my lease. In fact, I had to scramble in the month of August to get payday loans from predatory lenders just to pay the rent through the end of my sub-tenants’ stay, so they didn’t get their credit ruined. But I couldn’t manage to save my own credit, and I determined at that point that salvaging my credit was not doable.
In August, my friend Rich, who splits his years between living in Colorado and Florida had let me know that I could go stay in his condo in Denver, so that was my next destination. So for two weeks in September, I was able to spend time with my daughter while planning for the liquidation of my meager belongings and my move to Denver.
We maintained the livability of the apartment for a couple of weeks, and with about three days to go before the move, we got busy with the liquidation. I had already had to sell my car, so everything we did was without my own transportation. I listed anything of any value on Craig’s List (which wasn’t much). I borrowed my ex-wife’s car to take anything else with value but not sellable to Goodwill, hauled bags of worthless junk to the trash, and the rest, which was mostly just personal memorabilia, I hauled to a 5’x6’ storage unit.
The last three days of my stay in San Jose were exhausting and cathartic. The story of those three days is worth an article, or maybe even a book in it’s own right. Here’s just one vignette from that time.
On our final evening there, after the trip to Goodwill, I had one last load of stuff to take to the storage unit before returning my ex’s car. When we got to the unit, just a couple minutes after 5:00 pm, they had just closed the gate for the evening and couldn’t re-open it. So I had to take the stuff back to the apartment.
The objects I still had in my possession included two wall hangings that I cherished. One was a metal wall hanging of the sun that I had painted in gold. The other was a circular mirror wall hanging with metal rays extending from it — another representation of the sun. Together they probably weighed 50-60 pounds.
So the next morning, because I no longer had a car, I got up early and carried those two items in my arms, along with a backpack filled with a few other items, two miles to the storage unit.
Now you might think that this event would have been a depressing trudge of shame, but instead I was filled with a profound sense of purpose, determination, and pride as I hiked through the San Jose suburban streets. Though my life was collapsing down to a tiny capsule, I knew that the potential for the re-expansion was stronger than ever. This was an epic story in the making — as long as I believed it was.
And I did.
My daughter’s demeanor throughout this whole experience was one of stoic, if not upbeat, acceptance. She expressed complete understanding of the power to transmute these hard times into a story that can change everything.
That meant everything to me.
Yes, we were sacrificing our comfort, or security, and our pride, not to mention our time together, which both of us always enjoyed. But we both understood that through the power of Belief and perseverance, we would be able to alchemize our hardships.
With all my possessions liquidated or stored, I returned to the apartment to do the final cleanup and to pack for my flight. Rich didn’t have a bed for me to sleep on, but I did have a blowup mattress, which I packed into my one carry-on bag. It completely filled the entire bag, with no room left over for clothes. The only clothes I was able to take were what I was wearing and what I could squeeze into my briefcase, along with my computer and accessories.
My ex-wife came and picked up my daughter, and I paid for a Lyft to the airport with the very last of the money I had in my bank account. Next stop, Denver.
I had arranged with Rich to pick me up at the airport in Denver, but when I landed at around 9:00pm that night, he said he was too tired to drive to the airport. I told him no problem, but that he would need to Venmo me some money for a Lyft, as my bank account was effectively empty (and of course I had zero credit card balance available). He did, and 45 minutes later, on September 15, I arrived at his place — my new temporary home. I inflated my air mattress, got a blanket and pillow from Rich, and crashed — exhausted.
The next day, Rich and I started talking about plans for the future and how to proceed. He was (and is) all about crypto, and he was excited to tell me about Pump.fun, the leading meme coin launch platform that allows you to livestream about your coin. He knew that crypto was a key component of the ISITAS project, and he encouraged me to give Pump.fun a try. I had been thinking about blockchain and crypto as a more fundamental aspect of the project — not just launching a meme coin, which frankly seemed a little cheesy to me.
But I thought about it, and on September 17, I went onto Pump.fun and launched ITcoin on a whim. I really didn’t understand how it all worked, but I got on Pump.fun and started pitching the ITcoin project.
Then, just two days into the project, the coin took off! Some crypto whale noticed it and made an investment, followed by their entourage, and the value shot up to $112K. When I logged into Pump.fun and saw that I had just earned $600 in creator fees, I didn’t think it was real at first. I assumed it was some kind of scam. But it wasn’t. I had actually just earned $600.
Of course, my ex-wife had been desperately pleading with me for money, so I had to take my winnings off the table to send to her instead of re-investing them in the project. But that was a wonderful moment for me, when I felt an incredible sense of relief that I was able to take the pressure off for a moment.
But the relief was short-lived. Right around the same time as this happened, I received a notice from the Social Security Administration saying that they were reducing my payment by 50% to pay back an overpayment from the previous year. I won’t go into the details, but the excess payments the SSA had sent me earlier in the year were what I used to survive in San Jose during the months after my layoff. And now they required repayment. So my monthly benefit dropped from $2388/month to $1194 — and my ex-wife was expecting to receive $1600/month.
So it was a very brief respite before my ex’s adamant demands for more money resumed. Now I might as well address an apparent discrepancy here. Obviously, a person earning only $1200/month can’t be expected to pay $1600/month for child support. Child support is calculated based on income. But the fact that I don’t have the same income that I once did doesn’t mean that my daughter is in less need of support.
This has been another source of friction with my siblings family, who uniformly agree that the way to handle the situation is to just play hardball with my ex and only send her what I can afford or what the law would require, as if my daughter’s life experience was a minor factor in the equation.
From my perspective, I am willing to reduce my life to the bare minimum in order to provide my daughter with some semblance of normalcy in her life — even if it is still insufficient.
By October, I was right back in pressure cooker mode. I was still trying to ramp up my project to earn side money — the creative project I had launched previously to try and garner support from my own meager personal network and a Fiverr gig. And I was also getting more engaged in the ITcoin project, streaming every day for an hour on Pump.fun and spinning up the social presence.
I also started devoting more time to the overall ISITAS project, starting to write SubStack articles, including the major 200 Axioms article I had worked on over the summer — none of which produced any income.
Then, on November 2, disheartened by the lack of any more progress on ITcoin, I decided to take a day off and just work on the websites. In the afternoon, I was adding a link to the ITcoin page to the website, and when I went to Pump.fun to copy the URL, I noticed that the market cap of the coin had shot up to $423K!
Another crypto whale had noticed that I had been streaming religiously for over a month and had bought a big chunk. As the meme coin space reliably works, that whale was followed by an entourage of dolphins (people with significant amounts to invest in crypto), as well as a multitude of fishes (people with nominal amounts to invest). Altogether, the trades made by these people had resulted in about $9K in creator fees! This was a game changer!
By the time I even knew what was happening, the dump had already begun. When I showed up, the comments were full of people exhorting me to reinvest the creator fees I had just earned in the coin to prop it up. They were also chanting that I should lock up a bunch of my earnings. I wasn’t even sure what that meant.
This whole event is something of a blur. Everyone was saying that the proper action would be for me to use half my creator fees to buy the coin to demonstrate my support for the coin. So I did that — right in the middle of the dump. It didn’t slow the sell-off at all, and it was basically like pouring half of my earnings down the drain. Then they were telling me that I should lock up my coin with some service called Streamflow. I was just trying to comply with the proper protocols, so I went in to lock up my coin, and I accidentally locked up another $3K worth of the Sol I had just earned for a full year. It was a massive mistake. I effectively squandered $7K of the $9K I had just earned. It still pains me to think about it.
But at least I was able to make another child support payment and pay Rich some rent with the money I did take away from the event.
After that, I continued to livestream the ITcoin project every day for the next two months. I also created a really cool music video and a bunch of memes, and set up a steady drip of posts on social media. But by this time Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market had tanked, and it became clear that I wasn’t going to get lightning to strike a third time.
So on December 1, 2025 I quit investing my time and energy into live streaming, though I did keep the social posts and the Telegram group active. I had learned that the meme coin space is extremely reactive, but to one stimulus only — capital investment. Invest money in a coin, and investors will flock to it like moths to flame. If it has all the other elements of a quality meme coin, then so much the better. But the only factor that really matters is cash investment.
So I put ITcoin on the back burner and started focusing more of my time on writing content and producing videos. I wrote several articles on Substack and started creating reaction videos to videos produced by various channelers, mediums, and tarot readers who were generating videos about some amazing persona with a life story and mission that bore a striking resemblance to me. This campaign is a much longer story that I’ll expand on in future articles.
Meanwhile, December of 2025 felt like a pivotal month to me. I had started to feel more physically energetic over the month of November as I settled into my solitude, and I started doing pushups and dancing to my favorite songs. In December I adopted a regular routine of doing 100 pushups every day (broken into four sets throughout the day) and walking three miles each day. I also started fasting on Sunday’s, and maintained that discipline throughout December.
Another significant event from December is that I started watching ‘The Chosen’ series about the life of Jesus, and it had a profound effect on me. I found myself feeling deep emotions as I gained a renewed appreciation for the story and teachings of Jesus (Yeshua). I ended up watching the entire series twice, and created a reaction video to one particularly ISITistic scene involving Nicodemus.
Shortly after I started watching the series, I felt compelled to begin praying explicitly to God in Jesus’ name, and started doing so ‘religiously’ every morning and evening. I put ‘religiously’ in quotes, because I am still decidedly outside of any organized religion. Throughout my life I have meticulously avoided using any phrases that have been adopted by fundamentalist Christians because I did not want to give any impression that I was in any way caught up in their delusions, where they rationalize beliefs that are clearly antithetical to those expressed by Jesus.
At this point, I simply decided that I would not let those hypocrites co-opt the name of Jesus and the teachings of the bible. So I incorporated the phrasing used by Jesus into my prayers, and set about opening myself up to the Spirit, Jesus, God, AIO, and strengthening my belief that I am indeed here on this planet for a divine mission, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
This shift in my behavior and belief has not resulted in any material change in my circumstances. I have not had any increase in income or decrease in demand for the little income I do have. I have not experienced much increase in followers, or made any significant new connections. Nevertheless, I do have a profound sense that I have silently crossed an event horizon, and am now on a tractor beam to destiny.
2025 has been a pivotal year for my transformation. But I believe it is just the beginning of Mentor’s Metamorphosis.
