this is a drawing I sent to James Altucher. It was embarrassing to give to him because he's famous, but I forced myself to do it. It's 100% honest

I recently read an article by @infovore, about the strategies that top authors use to write their posts and books. As I scanned the methods, I realized something important about the reasons I write. Of course, I write for myself, to clear out the ideas. But I have another pressing reason I write.

I write to hopefully help people who are suffering, to give them a little spark, a feeling of hope. I do this because James Altucher’s writing did that for me. I know a lot of people are like me: quiet, shy, struggling to make sense of their fucked up lives……a lot of us are desperate.

The most desperate of us, we are searching, trying to find others who are like us. It sucks thinking we might be alone with our crazy ideas.

For many years I read self-help books. The people writing them seemed fake. None really stood out.
So then I found Vandana Shiva, you know, people changing the world. They became my online mentors. Each one I studied carefully. This was 2011. I went through information, people, innovators. No one really could answer my troubling question:

HOW DO I TURN MY INSANE MIND THAT’S FULL OF A MILLION DIFFERENT CRAZY IDEAS INTO MONEY?

This was my problem: too many ideas, no follow through.

Like ADD on acid. That’s my brain. And without a roadmap, it's useless.

The lame self-help gurus couldn’t help me. They weren’t like ME. They had cheesey, photoshopped covers and no-fat Chai Lattes by their sides. I was drinking yesterday’s coffee straight from the pot. I was licking ashtrays (haizara). They had personal chefs and schedules tightly made. I had last year’s to-do list stuck to the bottom of my sore foot with tape left-over from my 5 year-old's toys.

I had a floor of human trash, and a thousand mad ideas floating within it. No time. Just panic.

Then I (thank Buddha) somehow, some way, found James Altucher. From the very first moment of discovering his stories, I felt an affinity that borders on obsession.

I felt like I was reading the contents of my own mind. It was really spooky. I was hooked! The floodgates opened and after about a year of being influenced by his writing, I started “spilling my guts” like he recommends. It was scary, it still is scary.

So, after I do this for a while now, I realize, holy shit, there’s probably thousands of people like me who are trapped inside their crazy minds! I try to reach out as much as possible, and be a symbol of “spilling my guts” so that other people can feel comfortable taking baby steps, too.

I’m giving back what was given to me by James: healing through radical, honest writing.

This is why I write. Oh, yeah, and I have a lifetime of pent up stories. Although I’ve written on and off for my entire life, I never considered myself to be a “writer” but merely a recorder of thoughts. Writing is easy for me, it’s not something I’ve even taken seriously until 2013 when the story of the Solar Girl came to me through a vision……
Writing and making art are survival tactics for a mind who is lost…….it’s like breathing.

So, to see how James Altucher has influenced the course of my life:

2013: 100% broke. Applying to jobs, getting nowhere. No one wanted to hire me despite my college degree and creative mind. First find Altucher's story, How To Deal With Crappy People (life changing story).
2013-mid-way through: got a job in car sales to relieve financial disaster.
2014: still working for the dealership, saving up money. Hating every fucking minute of car dealership mafia.
2015: self-published my first book, Un-Crap Your Life (Dedicated my book to James Altucher)
2016: quit all day jobs. Became full-time freelance writer for Interesting Engineering and a software company.
2016: had website built for me stellabelle.net
2016: co-authored a second book, Steemit 101.
2016: currently working on a third book.

You can see that my trajectory has shifted from a life as a wage slave to a creative writer who is making a decent living. I shifted from hating my life to making my life work in a creative way. I think this is the start to my creative future.
This is significant. I’ll be honest, I never thought it would be possible to do this. It is from James that I came to understand how to turn ideas into money. He showed me how to do this. I think that if I hadn’t found his writings, my life might look very different. I struggled with confidence in the creative fields, and now, it appears that I’m doing exactly what comes natural to me: writing and making art.
Thanks, James Altucher.