Have gay men ever cried during or after sex because it was just that good? by Kyle Phoenix

 

• I once stood up in the bed afterward and applauded.
• I once gave a struggling student a thank you card full of cash the second go round.
• I once sent a framed painting a week later.
• I'm good for flowers, Fresh Direct weeks worth of groceries.
• I once spent a year finding lookalikes to past crushes with the same Zodiac signs to have sex with reasonable doppelgangers to create metaphoric closure. Literally metaphysical, psychological OCD.
• I once, badly, serenaded a guy under his bedroom window.
• I've spent untold thousands on small gifts, books, five-star dinners, tickets to concerts, Broadway shows (I generally say a friend gave me two tickets so guys don’t feel weird about us having different expenditure limits).
• I once slept soundly.
• I once compared notes with a guys roommate, they were unbeknownst to me, visiting alternate days.
• I once got applause from everyone present and active in the group.

I have yet to cry. But I’m young.....
And frisky.
Give me time.

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow

What's the smartest move so far you've done for your business? by Kyle Phoenix

I did the E Myth Process. I'm still doing it.

I'd kept general records, spreadsheets of sales, I knew my analytics from social media, I tracked posts, produced a newsletter per Dan Kennedys advice then I picked up Gerber and then bought E-Myth Revisited. I started the process in 11/2016.

I had a broad strategic planning document that I was dropping info into, I also had notebooks evolving ideas, journal thoughts, weighing options.

Then I got serious. Its like night and day now that I've followed the process. I now have delineated divisions, titles and categories. I thought I was creating in a natural progressive line, like a train. But now I have an info graphic of Star Trek shuttles, runabouts, starships, space stations and planetary systems. It seems odd but I now able to label say my blog is a space station. Stationary but a connective link to other things, where one comes for more detail about lesser sizes.

An " /answer/post " is a shuttle; an article, special report, video, brief a runabout; a book a full starship.

Silly I know. But then I breakdown into planets around marketing, finance, sales, management, development, etc..

So I know today I'm just dealing with planet Marketing, it might overlap to other worlds but a binder is just about Marketing and all of its fleet/mini systems.

There are now designated binders, which will probably end up banker boxes by divisions. I know have a concrete employee plan and manual. I had to design a sales manual which epitomized my company policy, describing the validity of sales products, a selling process, a clear straight, commission compensation state for sales people, margin breakdowns for companies, consignment breakdowns for brick and mortar stores.

It has also freed me up to delineate what was a new product, an ancillary service, a new product line. One of my big challenges has been monetization of my tv shows beyond first run broadcast, essentially how does one sell into syndication. 2015 I thought Vessel was the answer, a pay service for creator owned content. Two problems: All of my numbers of viewers are in tv world, 500,000 a week, Vessel wanted page hits measurements. Apples vs grapes. Secondly Vessel was acquired by Verizon because it couldn't maintain its platform model. So now I've got millions in a back end library catalogue to shop around again in an attempt to recoup the outlay costs. Close to 400 episodes but there are tv copyright issues with half of them.

E-Myth taught me how to solve a problem uniquely by being able to see, two planets can share their resources and channels of distribution. When everything was crowded on one big clunky ship I didn't have the room and the resources it gives to infuse one with the strengths of the other.

I can also now see there are a multitude of places that I'm getting money from that with a Dan Kennedy marketing tweak I've turned into a waterfall from a spigot. Without separation, definition and reformation I would still be plodding along. Ironically I stopped a lot of new production to streamline and now my capacity to produce and network has massively increased.

I'm still in progress, a yearly marketing campaign starting but I now have clear visionary mappings until 2025 and its like there are Managers and Technicians building in space around the clock. The planetary system covers a vast amount of space but I'm networked throughout and I can see further expansion to other systems as we divert resources in micro proportions to intergalactic colonies of new product lines. In many ways I think small businesses resist the structure of McDonald's, the systems, without looking at the benefits of such directed systems.

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenix

Why can't I write a world-wide, bestselling book? by Kyle Phoenix

You're asking the Whore Question.

Why can't I turn one trick and a billionaire will see my heart of gold and sweep me off my feet like Pretty Woman?

Or you could be content making an effort, not an entitlement wish, and working at the craft until you perhaps hit a lucrative vein because your work resonates with quality and connection.

Nah.

Pray to be the uber rewarded whore. That happens allllllll the time. Just wish really, really hard.

#kylePhoenix

How do you understand that you'll be a writer? #KylePhoenix

You don't.

Any pretensions initially basically mean you're a narcissistic asshole/fool. You simply start by the desire to express yourself like tens of millions have for millennia.
But if you consistently work at it from middle school to college and 10 years beyond, you're registered for the marathon.
Then.......

You write.

You write badly for years.

You take some classes, get some feedback, get that first thing nationally, internationally published.

(Writers Digest big book of magazine markets is great. I started off sending 20 submissions a month in college. One tome in a Barnes and noble I picked up an interesting magazine and one of my short stories was in it!)

Then you start thinking hmmmmmm?

But not yet.

Don’t label yourself. Get 10 years of writing under your belt, a few thousand pages. All the dreck out. (The Hemmingways a 500 page handwritten tome that was a soap opera of near biblical proportions. I wrote it from the 7th grade to the 9th, and other students passed it around school. The Dean pulled me into his office with my sudsy trope between us. He said I was a writer. I was slightly aghast and embarrassed.)

High school I wrote another eight 300 page manuscripts. Not the Hemmingways. A novella that I would submit while at college in Buffalo to one in Boulder, and they published more short stories, suggested the 125 page novel was a novel. A few years later, boom 500 pages.

I've published a lot of books, short stories, articles, blogs and the honest truth is I think, people name you a writer and then it sort of dawns on you like a sweater you've been wearing for years .

I was doing a book signing/event, maybe 50 people, a rainstorm got me there so late I just gave away the 60 books I had because people stayed. And I had it filmed for my TV show and people were asking me all these writerly questions.

It was about 20 years since I was passing around the Hemmingways and I was like
"Hmmmm, I think I'm a writer, author now."
20 years.
Minimum 10,000 pages.
4+ published books.
25 articles.
250 blogs.
Money paid to you for writing that allows you to buy yourself a nice dinner.
When you've made that much commitment you've earned the title in a true way not a goth kid with poetry that mentions trees, love, leaves, soul----the quad poetry signal of bad/amateur work. And then people will validate it back.

#KylePhoenix

Is it more difficult for poor people to succeed because they are constantly in survival mode? by Kyle Phoenix

Yes. Emphatically so. I have to remember this when counseling students, pointing out things even explaining taxes/withholding. I've learned to stop mental cpr on the walking dead.

Recently I was talking to a grad student who was lamenting bills, low pay. I suggested in exchange for a lower return he raise his exemptions and itemize rather than EZ 1040. He freaked out, then shutdown and then turned on law & order on his phone. He then repeated "I'm not going to change my mind." I then pointed out I wasn't trying to change his mind, I was just explaining a legal way to get $200 more in his weekly check. $800 every two weeks not enough for his bills. This would be another $800 plus and still a couple of thousand back from taxes. Its not what you make, its what you keep. There was a moment, true cognitive dissonance where I realized we both realized the opposite idea. He realized I wasn't trying to change his mind about anything.

I realized I was trying to fundamentally change his mind about everything.
I was suggesting that the modality he was operating from geared questioning that an HR person saying put 0 or 1 was only saying that because they had been told so too. No one who didn't do some thinking and investigation engaged money like that. But if you've just got the job, under $40k a year, you're happy.....and scared.

My suggestion of asking why and even taking agency to do differently blew his mind.

The tyranny of poverty is it forces people away from critical thinking.
A construction contractor mentioned taxes and that his preparer hasn't gotten him back a return in over 20 years. But costs $200 to prepare the taxes and last year the IRS took another $500 on top of the 38% fed and 15% state and 9.7% fica. I suggested he stop treating the preparer like an oracle and go to somewhere like hr block and treat them like a partner, even better a knowledgeable but directed employee. He froze.

I saw the same cognitive dissonance brain jerk in him.

A third employee (its a big campus/building) felt he was paying too much but was scared of questioning his tax guy. Scared! When I asked him whose money it was he hesitated then said his----and got my point.

All three examples make between $30-75k a year but have a poverty mindset. It can feel like being in the bottom of a slave ship if I get into conversations. Honestly I find myself being selective about company at work or just disappearing to go out for lunch.

Harsh reality that I realized a decade ago: Not everyone will make it. Some people are grist for the mill, chum for the rapacious hunger of capitalism through consumerism.

I estimate 50% of blacks over the next 100 years and 25-50% of whites and Latinos based on family histories. 10% of Asians. 50% of native Americans.
The real hot entrepreneurial business of the future is poverty management----real estate, job centers, food supply, entertainment sources----oh, wait that's kinda true now.

The first coworker is job-hunting but has had no success in 3 months because he's chasing a number. So say he's offered $40k a year. He leaps from $32k to $40k without understanding that he's just gone from the 30% tax.bracket to 38%. So his net before was around $19k, it would then be an extra $100 a week. $200 biweekly. Or a real gain of only $4k. A year later, maybe two until he's dancing with the credit devil to make the $40k feel like more. Because he's only getting $25k in cash, taxes, not counting sales tax and financial fees, another 20% "invisible tax".

He would leave $32k for $40k to ultimately make maybe $1k more. But he'll look at the salary number and mentally boast he's making $10k more! And in order to validate himself---a Black reaction to social discrimination, he'll lease or car loan buy a vehicle and the $25k car will make him feel like he's making/worth $65k a year. Then you know loan servicers sell your info to banks right? So here comes the Chase, Citi, TD Bank $5000 Visa....because you deserve it. Actually its because you have been flagged as a sucker.

Now your girlfriend or boyfriend becomes a financial necessity....so you shack up . Hetero world you spend enough no married time sexing, there will be a baby/babies. A child is now a flat $12,000 cost per year if you stay together, 17% of your adjusted gross WORTH not simply salary, courts have seen men get McDonald's jobs . Courts have amended how they measure income/worth.

The bonus of LGBT relationships is generally a planning for children and a lack of legal marriage. Dudes I've, shacked up, just child support, married and divorcing, alimony.

The child support Armageddon is real, keeping people in poverty.

Two other coworkers, 1 has one daughter, finished paying $400 a month after 21 years, in August.

Another was a grandfather by the time he'd paid off out of arrears for three adult children.

Back to Dude at $40k and inevitable breeding.
. $30k in car, credit and another $10k plus in miscellaneous added to your salary is $100k, and 17% is $17k.

Without the ability, skill to recognize financial management and how money works, money itself will keep him in poverty.

And he desperately is seeking a girlfriend, he'll have a couple of kids before 35. Probably broken up by 40. Paying child support until he's 50. Another 17% tax.

Which means he'd have to realize a 20% salary increase yearly to meet childcare cost for 18 years plus 3% in inflation.

Focusing on survival and using sex and entertainment as distractions and then sleep, I realized talking to him he was one of the Future 50, the direct opposite of the Talented Tenth. But by the time he realizes it, if ever consciously it will be too late.

But the unconscious mind speaks first and what did he say after my discussion with him.....?
"I won't change my mind...."
I heard him.
I'll never interrupt that feedback loop with anything above 6th grade conversational drivel again.
He announced that fundamentally the infection of poverty has consumed the host rendering him powerless.

Ramon Gonzalez

 · 5y

It’s the “now” mindset. People don’t think long term but paycheck to paycheck.

I was raised this way. I worked at Walmart and was not happy. MY parents told me I should be happy to have a job. I bought into this up until I turned 26 and had a WTF moment.

12 years later, a lot of reading and learning and I am at $85k. No longer trying to get a large return at the end of the year because that is just an interest free loan to the government. Instead, I try to break even in order to be able to put more money into 401k and get even more tax breaks.

Now I am trying to learn short term investing to create a 2nd stream of passive income. Money should work for you not the other way around.

What has been the most reassuring dream you've had? by Kyle Phoenix

My mother died on a Wednesday morning as I was getting her dressed for a doctors appointment. Her last words to me were, "Kyle, I love you.". I performed CPR and within five minutes emts and firefighters were there and turned the living room into an ER. Twenty minutes later I called it, and almost a dozen people sort of whooshed out of the apartment within 15 minutes.

Before dealing with the hospital and funeral home I laid down to cry and sleep. I was asleep for about 4 hours.

In the vision was a mausoleum, crypt, gazebo in a dense woods. My mother walked out of the forest and came up and hugged me. She was in a dark dress, her hair done shoes. In life shed had a leg amputated, was obese, had lost her hair and was not in good shape visually. She comforted me and then lead me into the structure where four of my living cousins were hovering in midair, she pointed out that they had been good to her.

The next scene was light a court where she presided over my stepfather and his daughter (deep greed and lying issues) came before her and had to kneel. My godmother said that in death our spirits must answer to those we've done ill to.

A couple of days layer I dreamt that my mother was at the top corner of the ceiling, floating and I reached out for her to take me with her. The scene changed to the room sort of and us on the bed and that I had a choice. We were one one side of the chasm and there was another, a deep gash in the earth below. I chose to slide down, cross the stream of water and climb back up to another side that was a full office of my books, some I've published, others, I didn't recognize and I slowly walked out of that office/hallway, gallery.

Prior to her dying, two years before I went to live at her house, she had strokes, the amputation, she would come incessantly in my dreams to come to her. I'm talking like four nights a week, I began dreading sleep. In this reality she was steadily getting sicker and finally I went.

Two more dreams happened there I Charlotte. She was in a diabetic rehab, I was at the house. I'd taken my constitutional walk and come in to nap. My grandmother dead over 20 years came roaring to me in my dream to wake up, wake up, my mother was in danger. I jump up, rush on the bus, get there and my mother I in her bed, fine. Shed been moved, away from the pictures on her dresser including my grandmother due to a mass flooding of the unit.

2nd dream. We've decided to leave Charlotte, leave her husband, move back to NYC. But I'm still on the doubt fence, move, move an invalid, empty a 3bdrm house, transport close to 1000 miles, doctors, money, medication, travel arrangements in-between. A lot.

Its Tuesday.
We're to leave on Sunday. She says she wants to die and be buried with family , mother and sister in NY.
I'm now at 60% No, 40% Yes. Its just such an undertaking.....

I go to sleep.
I'm in a loft, like my inner sanctum in bed and five trees, beings, forms come over to me and start reforming. They tell me sometimes you have to break the rules to do what's right.
The five reform into the dead brigade.
My grandmother.
My uncle.
My oldest aunt.
My youngest aunt.
A female cousin.
They keep reiterating I must do what my mother wants.

All dead.

I woke up energized and committed, we left Sunday.

Now the dead brigade had been regularly visiting me for years as they died. I think I was to get me comfortable with death itself. To handle things, to counsel, to take action physically and spiritually.

My mother dream visits, most recently on her birthday but they e massively tapered off. And my mothers death, for a decade my greatest fear, was easy like cream. I was so accepting of her wishes and end that I thought I was crazy. I'm not sad she's dead, because she's somewhere else. I'm sometimes even glad she's gone, no longer in pain, no longer needy, no longer such a weight at me. I miss her as my friend, she was one of the top 5 smartest friends I've ever had. But I'm glad the manipulative, narcissistic person is gone too. I discovered that I too was addicted to her abuse and that therapy and terminal state shifted me to becoming the sympathetic, empathetic parent who was her companion/parent to the end. Full circle parenting between us as she'd always felt more like my sister, child than absolute parent.

I can still feel the connection that I could in life. It used to be a rope but now it feels like a thread, maybe a steel filament, strong but thin.

What I know for sure, is all that they have told me, death is a transition to another state, form, something. We can visit there as they visit here but I agree with Pragh, it feels like differing frequencies so the messaging is audio, visual, language, emotion, all at once----its a broad spectrum communication all at once.

And our dreams are the superhighway.....

#KylePhoenix

Lesson 82 ACIM by Kyle Phoenix

Dr. Umar Johnson said that the black community needs more entrepreneurs not college graduates. Is he right? by Kyle Phoenix

Yes, he is but by being right about that he's not necessarily saying no to advanced education. What he's suggesting is both and a consciousness towards a more expansive community capability.

There are 3 positionalities in Capitalism: Property/Object, Consumer/Employee, Owner/Creator.

African Americans have solidly been 2, with a micro percentage moving into the third, Owner. Not owning real property, materials, resources, manufacturing or production facilities, intellectual property means that we are dependent on external sources of employment and private funding, and mentorship.

I don't want to paint a destitute portrait, Black Enterprise magazine clearly illustrates a broad Black Fortune 200 of companies throughout the spectrum of industries. Johnson's point is that comparatively speaking to several metrics our entrepreneurial efforts are not substantive enough.

One, AAs spend $1 trillion dollars plus into American businesses, yet we're a tenth of the wealth holders in America per capita by household. Whites have an average of $141k as household net worth, this being historically inflated by the generational segregation of the GI Bill post WW2 veterans. Our current household AA net worth on average is $19-25k, behind several Latino groups and Asian ethnicities. We could hold and improve that at progressive Civil Rights but the reactionary response of AAs maintains the "Pooring " Effect.

Two, the Pooring Effect is strengthened by seeking validation in objects, bling, watches, cars, purses, shoes, hair weaves, gold chains, clothing, cable TV, leasing cars, all of those doodads, liabilities, disposable, not appreciating assets. Johnson rightfully points out the effort to be White or feel better about being Black by buying objects of no value. This cements people into the cycle of only 2 positions in a capitalistic framework.

I was watching Power 105, a video of the radio show here in NYC, Pete Davidson of SNL interview and he and Charlemagne were talking about buying expensive watches and having them on. Patek Philippe, starting at $5000 to $10,000 and whether it was an investment. Davidson was talking about SNL, living in an apartment and doing well. Charlemagne has a long term contract, bigger exposure, a book out, I'm sure he's projecting more and more moves to TV. Davidson though is a comic, working gig to gig. A watch , yes might appreciate in value but its not an asset. An asset makes you money. The book behind Charlemagne, that's an intellectual property asset, his home in New Jersey is an asset. Ironically Johnson had been on the show recently. He was talking about the mentality that lacks financial education but shops to validate self. Both are ultimately Employees—-no coincidence.

Three, other cultures practice Legacy Building. Insurance policies, home transfer, 529k plans, beneficiaries to 401k plans. AAs work, work hard but through a lack of financial education pay 72.4% in taxes overall then spend, debt /credit card what's leftover to buy doodads of no value. Again, a repercussion of being an Employee/Consumer.

This leads to the absence, vacuum of Voltron like financial power to come together in micro and major ways. We have stuff, things of value, yes but we're squandering what we have.

Umar’s point about degrees is that higher education degreed children are repeating their parents financial ignorance and not building private wealth. So we stay dependent on external cultural systems that do not serve our cultural interest but we lack leverage to force change.

Entrepreneurs though tend to have a different mindset, one of growth vs a fixed employee mindset. An entrepreneur knows how to sit down and decide at tax time costs, allocate money, decide on new investments into assets that generating income, revenue, ever increasing value.

I recently won a small amount of money and a coworker, about 23, African, asked for some/what was I going to do with it. I told him there are 3 Contexts to money.

1. Make money
2. Make money make money
3. Legacy money

I'd made the money by winning the raffle but now I had to make it make money and then that money make money and then to slowly create more and more legacy items in a portfolio for my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It wasn’t just a get and spend, singular engagement—Consumer—-relationship to money.

It was like watching a light come on in him and he started actually singing the 3 steps.

To Johnson's point, its a start.

But we need better, more expansive programming into communities and schools----I agree and teach specific financial information and have for the past 15 years at all educational levels.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad is a good reader, all the books in the series, about 40, I have and are an excellent programmatic primer for a Beginner to Intermediate, ready for Advanced financial education. I got Cashflow 101 and 202 to play with students, but its hard in a semester or two with other core work to ascertain future financial wherewithal and the ability most importantly to create, manage, own a business.

Ownership requires less money but more education.

A degree and getting a job and shopping is easier, like suicide.

I've said before about Johnson (and maybe I'll forward it to him the text of), this context in Spiral Dynamics:

There's a brief section where it talks about race and Civil Rights leaders coming to understand that we moved from one level (3) to now level 4-legality, laws, racism, truth, justice and stopped, when White America, not entirely, but has expanded to include Level 5---capitalism, entrepreneurship, self actualization, ownership, self valuation, being a creator, the natural evolution.

I would say Whitney Young had this evolution in mind as he was negotiating behind the scenes with White business people, backed by Black Titan AG Gaston, one of the major private funders of the Civil rights movement.

Umar Johnson is polemic but he's not crazy nor wrong. 

#KylePhoenix

Why would not all homosexual men and women want to seek reparative therapy if for no other reason to live an easier life? by Kyle Phoenix

I think all humans articulate our self preservation sense also as not just a right to live but also to be good and validated by the tribe around us, even if that thing is oppositional.

LGBTQ people feel an intrinsic sense of value and worth as humans but also have enough similarities with others to ignore the decree of self as wrong. It is seen internally as wrong compared to ideologies but not nature which is why western civilization which worships Scientism, not God (yes, fundamentalists are right) is constantly gripped in trying to find a biological answer to being LGBTQ. Its trying to get its "godhead" to legitimize sexuality differences because western ontology is built on measurement and legal systems rather than humanistic experience.

The further question then becomes what would be a better life? Once you start muffin diving or pole playing, you still have to pay the cell phone bill. Yes, therapy is often helpful to manage and integrate life healthily but if you intrinsically feel you're right and valid, you would not think it could be fixed. While I think once the cat is out the bag, its a scratch and itch for life, I think you can opt for all the mass population social rights and privileges that are easier to access as a heterosexual.

That desire, which i think is valid and true, I'm thinking about people who are not classically attractive or disabled or have a large family inheritance at stake. There might be good competing reasons that suggest you should seek to alter what doesn't work for you. Will it work? Who knows? I'm still confused by that Chrisley guy on TLC because the constant joke is we're all thinking the same thing, right? But say he's being disingenuous about aspects of his core identity because he loves his wife and wants a different life----go for it. I draw the line at coercion or oppression but I know plenty of past SUNY schoolmates living in the closet using religion, family, therapy to repair what they see as error.

I think spiritually they are at a crux point. Your 0-4s are you new souls, often from tight knit communities, large families. 4 is when you venture to the Big City which is generally full of you popping 6-8s (9-10s generally migrate back to the country). But if you're a 4/5 you're torn between comfort and becoming the wild, the unknown, the reviled. Much of humanity demands conformity, sameness, it must be very upsetting to feel pulled from the inside in two different directions.

I think a lot of our social discords has to do with not expressly identifying these levels and the lives they suggest.

Ainslie MacLeod details out this all in The Instruction, grew book to see where one is at and understand others. The deep concern over sexuality is very lower level, in the hetero and the not hetero, it's one of the lesser human experience values. So when folk are waving flags, activism based on sexuality, keeping up on the scientific research, you got some 3-6s.

One spiritually outgrows a deep interest, now I'm wholesale committed to human rights, the right for you to disagree or go into such psychic crunching therapy. Knock yourself out, its literally your life to splash these paints onto.

People in this thread will go all willy milly on this----watch, and you'll be able to see younger spirits trying to assert selfhood, identity, power, controls.

Kids.
Meh......

#KylePhoenix

#ThekylePhoenixShow

Are there cultures or professions where it's common to have mentors? by Kyle Phoenix

 

Yes, they are but in multiple forms.

All of your k to 12 teachers are mentors but most only listen to them on one level. Often when people reflect about meaningful teachers, they relate the teacher speaking more expansively. Any teacher who tells you more than the book is a mentor.

Books are encapsulated mentorship because generally they relay a lot of the thinking the person was using.

Sitting Bull then becomes your mentor.
Golda Meier shows you how to construct a society.

If you're smart , really smart you've got at least a hundred mentors sitting in your personal library. Ironically if you don't have a library, you probably need mentors. For the past 14 months Michael Gerber has been mentoring me through a business systems rehab. Inch by grueling inch. I expect it to be a two year process.

To find adult mentors means you must edit your company. You must make the Wagon of Success you're pulling as empty of detrius people as possible because mentors take up a lot of space. They also won't be in easy to access places because they are learning, practicing so it's like you are parachuting onto a moving car. You have to be sure of your questions, interests, etc and stand out.

The Adult Education programs at Columbia fizzled out just as I arrived in 2009 so I thought how can I give into this situation, stay in the river while it reorients? I started teaching. At first for free and then I batted that out of the park then they said Brookfield comes to town twice a semester, his classes will fulfill. By his first class I had bought six of his 14 books. Day 2 the other 8 arrived. I then took his classes, the same ones at least four times each. He's that good. He then mentored me about teaching, consulting, publishing, writing, business and dying parents over the course of the past few years.

Undergraduate several moons before that I was a sophomore and a friend mentioned a professor Carlene Hatcher Polite that I might like who taught writing and literature classes. But one had to audition their work and it was only for Juniors and Seniors only. I dragged a five foot duffel page full of binders and notebooks, auditioned and got a special exception to get in. The next semester Carlene made me her first TA in fifteen years. There are no undergraduate TAs, a special waiver was created for me. She then introduced me to Raymond Federman who I became a TA for----he would leave me to teach his class when he was out of the country during Drop/Add.

Mentors are often eccentric by if you full court show up they will see you and draw you in closer because they know they gain more power from your enhancements. Your augmentation is proof of concept.

They exist in all cultures and professions, they tend to be odd to the system. Look for the ones who seem to have freedom and liberty that others don't. But there are millions. Then approach with a smile and a question and know the suggestion they give is a test to see if you're serious.