I spent most of my adult life as a poet and writer. I've published eight books. These days I do freelance work with clients, as a typographer and a literary editor. And you know what? I'm so fucking burned out. And since AI is essentially dismembering my industry and killing it slowly like some sort of evil clown, I've decided to walk away from it. Actually, I've pretty much decided to walk away from almost everything. I'm going to sell all my possessions, leave my apartment, and stay with my mom for a while to save money. She's old and sadly dying and when she passes I'm basically going to invest my entire inheritance in safe stuff and then forget about it and not live off of it. And then, given the fact that I've played guitar and performed for over 30 years, I'm going to get a German Shepherd and then busk my way across America with my dog from Missouri to California, and make a living there as a street performer, a busker. And before you say, "Oh, that's not going to happen, that's hard to do out there," keep this in mind: you haven't heard me play. When I play, people stop and listen. It's always been that way. I could make a decent living out there as a busker on my terms, my time, and I'd be doing what I love to do so much: perform and play music. Busking is a hard life in its way, but it pays waaaay more than people might think. I have no interest in being a recording artist. Live performing is my way, being the moment, living in real/time. But at first I'd be living on the road. Not rushing out to CA but slowly busking my way, meeting people, seeing America with my dog, being all Steinbeckian, confronting life and driving it into a corner, as Thoreau put it. And who knows, maybe I'll publish a book about the experience someday. I just know I can't do this life anymore. The straight life. The clock life. The digital life. The life of a cog in the wheel. I'm done with it. Remember what Janis said? Freedom's just another word for nothing left to do. The culture in its current state has gone full-blown crazy and so I have decided to go full-blown countercultural. I want to know what Kerouac knew, what the trainhoppers knew, what the old timers knew when they went west during the Depression, hoping California had the answers. For some of them it did. So that's it. I've decided to quit life as it has been and go in a completely new direction. I'm going west. After all, we live in another type of Depression. A bad one. A worse one.

I will do all this as a John without his Yoko if I have to, but I'd really love a Yoko.