"I was an alcoholic before, and I didn’t think I really had a problem, until I couldn’t break away from it. I couldn’t find myself happy, even off the street...I stopped drinking, it took me about fifty tries, but you know, I’d try and slip up...And over time I was able to quit and now I’m fifteen months sober and I got my wife. We’re pregnant with our first baby, a little girl...I’m living a second chance right now. I believe that you have to be your own chance. Second chances don’t come from other people. Second chances in life, even when they appear to be coming from somebody else, the opportunity really rises from within you."
Humans of Steemit Project
Hi friends! I am working on a project designed to share people's stories and market Steemit at the same time. It is called "Humans of Steemit" and was inspired after "Humans of New York". Here is the project:
I will walk up to strangers and ask if I can take their photograph and interview them. I will then tell them about Steemit and tell them that if they want, their interview can be posted on my blog on Steemit. I will also post on Craigslist and see if anyone is interested in meeting up to be interviewed. If they are willing to do the interview, I will tell them about how Steemit works and offer to give them half of the Steem Dollars that I make from their interview post on two conditions. The first condition is that they make a Steemit account themselves. The second condition is that they share a link of their interview post with all of their friends on Facebook. I have created a Facebook account for Humans of Steemit in order for them to tag the page and verify that they did indeed share the link with their friends.
The main idea behind this is that users of Steemit will be introduced to some amazing life stories. Additionally, the people that I interview will be introduced to Steemit and hopefully share Steemit with hundreds of their friends via Facebook. I have created a facebook page at facebook.com/humansofsteemit. I will create a "teaser" post for each interview that I do, with a link directing people to the full post on Steemit.
I believe that one of the beauties of Steemit is that it offers people a place to be genuine. I have seen some of the most popular posts on Steemit be stories where the author was as open and honest as possible. I think this is because we are all searching for and value true human connection. I hope to bring some more of those authentic voices to Steemit in order to foster an online community and add to the value of sincerity that so many authors have already created here.
On the last note, this is our community, and your voice is part of it. I am open to any comments or suggestions on how to model Humans of Steemit. Please send them my way!
The Interview
Me:
Can you describe your family and home that you were raised in?
Joshua:
I was born in California and my mother and father were only married for four more years. They got divorced and my mom married a truck driver, a very abusive, angry man. She had four children already. They had two kids together and we lived in a small town in California until I was eight years old and after that we moved to Patterson and her new husband became really abusive. And he ended up lighting my mom’s car on fire and all of this crazy stuff and he just had a weird anger problem, abusive with the children. So she ended up leaving him. She met a man named Shaun off the internet, and over the course of a weekend she left with him. And she left us kids home, she didn’t tell anyone. She didn’t even tell my dad that she left. We were there for two weeks before the cops showed up with my dad. They picked us up and moved us to Manteca, and I lived in Manteca for about three years. I couldn’t stop fighting with my father and one day my sister was late coming home from her first date. My father was a closet drinking Mormon. He punched her in the face, and so I hit him with a bat, broke his kneecap, and I went to juvenile hall until I was almost eighteen.
And when I was eighteen years old I moved over to England to live with my mom. I went to school called Woodgreen. England’s beautiful. It was so amazing, just to be away from everything,a completely different world. Everything’s so green and fresh…I was only there until I was about nineteen. And I was denied citizenship. So I came back to America and I was homeless. I didn’t have anywhere to go and I didn’t really have a home. So I just moved around the country doing odd jobs, hitchhiking from place to place. And just wanted to see our country. Wanted to see what it was like. I went from California to Arizona to Mexico and then Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida. Then I lived in Maine for a little while which was cool. I went to Chicago, New York City, New Jersey, been to Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, just about everywhere. On my way through Oklahoma one year around Christmas I was kidnapped by somebody while hitchhiking. They picked me up in a van, in a town of Armadillo, in Oklahoma. I can’t say his name, I don’t want to reveal his information, because he might have gotten out of prison.
He locked me up in a closet and came with his Mexican friends, they were just always kind of drunk and urinating on me. This guy was running from a warrant. His plan was to take me in to stores, with a gun in his pocket, and make me steal things, like electronics. He would take them and sell them to his Mexican friends, because he was trying to make money to get to Canada to get away from his warrant. It was probably the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard. And I ended up having to think my way out of that. The situation was really difficult but when he was having me steal from a store, I saw a bottle of medication sitting on the side of the counter where it was getting ready for pick-up, and I saw it was a narcotic. I convinced him that it was a fun thing to take and ended up crowning him one of these really old ashtrays. Then I called the cops, they came with all these big guns and they took him away and interrogated me. Then I was supposed to go to a court date after that. But I just didn’t want to stay around that area because of what happened. I told the cops that I was just gonna try and hitchhike to Texas and they drove me all the way to the border of the next town and they gave me $50.
I spent years just going around, back and forth. I learned a lot about people in general. And, nobody really knows what they’re doing and life, we can just do the best with what we have. I know that life’s too short to hold onto resentment and anger. I also know that you gotta forgive everybody. I understand why now, because nobody wants to feel bad. If you see another person and you say something mean about them, then you’re gonna feel bad. If you hold resentment towards people, then you feel bad. Really we’re all in the same struggle. We’re all held in the same debt, we’re all held having to pay the same fees, we’re all in the same boat you know. So it really taught me forgiveness, more than anything else. I feel like I have a much deeper understanding to the human condition because I’ve been a part of so many lives. I’ve had so many different types of jobs.
By the time I reached the age of twenty five, I started getting this feeling that I just really wanted to be a part of something. I missed my family you know. I missed the idea of having a family. And I decided I was going to change my scenario, so five years ago I came here. Something about it just told me it was my home. I just started doing random work and then I got a job at McDonald’s and held that for a while and then Burger King and then I got a laptop and found out I was really good with computers and I started editing somebody’s website from home. By the time I was off the streets for only three years, I applied for a job at a taxi company in Santa Rosa. And the guy who’s website I was editing turned out to be their computer technician and they hired me as a full time dispatcher.
So three years off the streets and I’m in my office job. Unfortunately when they hired me they didn’t tell me that they were going through a loss with tax evasion. And they just closed down and laid everybody off. I’ve been doing jobs on the side ever since. Now I finally got a job that I start Tuesday, I’m gonna be a cashier at a grocery store, it’s across the street from where I live.
Along the way I’ve quit drinking of my own accord. I just put down alcohol. I was an alcoholic before, and I didn’t think I really had a problem, until I couldn’t break away from it. I couldn’t find myself happy, even off the street. So I did a little bit of soul searching and I prayed a lot and I built a relationship with God. I stopped drinking, it took me about fifty tries, but you know, I’d try and slip up. I’d drink and the next day I would try again, and every time I messed up I would try again the next day. And over time I was able to quit and now I’m fifteen months sober and I got my wife. We’re pregnant with our first baby, a little girl. We’re naming her Ivoryana Pearl Berg. And my last name used to be Simmons but it’s Berg now, Selena’s father passed away from alcoholism and there’s nobody to carry on the Berg name, so I took his name.
Me:
What’s one thing that people always misunderstand about you?
Joshua:
People have a tendency to think that I’m angry at life. I think I’m just a little bit road-worn. When I look confused or even focused, often people confuse that with anger. People don’t realize that I’m a gentle kind-hearted person who really understands people and wants to share and grow and love, and that’s the hardest thing.
Me:
Did you have a point in your life where you were angry all the time?
Joshua:
Sure, when I was living with my dad, he was abusive. I was very, very angry. I’d go around and punch holes in the wall. Holes in the fence and break stuff and yell at my parents. I just, I missed my mom a lot.
Me:
What do you really love to do and do you do it often?
Joshua:
I’d have to say, working. It makes me feel accomplished. I do it all the time, every chance I get really. But I also love projects and I love technology. What they’re doing with projectors now is incredible. So I really like projects working with like custom displays. I built a motorized bike in the last three months. I love doing things. Building…And staying busy doing projects. My motorbike has about three hundred miles on it so far. I completed it a week after I lost my job at the other company and it’s quite unique. The only motorized bike I’ve ever seen with the big fat tires on it. Twenty nine inches tall in the wheels and four inches thick. I learned everything I know online, such as manufacturing, metal, and welding. You know cleaning the bike and refinishing it, painting it, sparking the alignment, chain tensioning. I had no idea about any of those things before.
Me:
You said that during your teenage years you went to juvenile hall, how long was that?
Joshua:
From 2001 to the end of 2003. It was rough, I mean I didn’t know anything. I was so naïve, all these people around me had the upper hand. I didn’t know anything about gangs. A lot of the Mexicans tried to get me jumped or hurt because they tried to get me to say something to the other gang members along the lines to support their gang. They just tricked me all the time and I got jumped a lot. It sucked so bad to be locked away from even just going outside. From putting your fingers down in the snow, in wet soil, feeing rain.
Me:
What do you want the most out of life?
Joshua:
I want to die with my wife holding my hand and my children at my side. It’s all I want. It’s not like I want to die, I just want more than anything in the world to die with my family.
Me:
Can you tell me about your tattoos here?
Joshua:
This is the U.S.B. symbol. I got it to represent the love that I have for electronics, as a plug and play symbol. And this one here is a little symbol from my banner, video game. This one was a joker. When I was in Texas at the age of nineteen, people called me Savage and I was running with those people who call themselves Juggalos. And so I got a tattoo of a joker from a playing card, just like your standard joker and I didn’t like it. Later on they just kept telling me that I couldn’t believe in God to be a Juggalo, so I told them I didn’t want anything to do with them. And so after that I covered it with a Sagittarius symbol, but most people think is the world.
Me:
Do you believe in second chances?
Joshua:
Yeah I’m living a second chance right now. I believe that you have to be your own chance. Second chances don’t come from other people. Second chances in life, even when they appear to be coming from somebody else, the opportunity really rises from within you. You know, it’s up to you whether or not the outcome of your life is good or bad. Ultimately all the decisions are in your hands, and that’s beautiful.
