What Happened Was....

Krakow, Poland, 2018: I'd just finished giving a presentation about the potential of blockchain technology as an enhancement for mainstream publishing. I left the venue with a spring in my step, because the presentation had gone well. Maybe the road ahead for this project would be a smooth one.

Then, blam. Only a few steps down the sidewalk from the Krakow St**mfest venue, I received a message from the lead partner of our joint witness team. Apparently a certain whale had watched via livestream and gotten himself triggered by a graphic we'd shown onscreen.

Before you even ask--no, I'll not go into detail or name names. Let's just say he had always been a questionable actor with known psychosis, but the short version of that fiasco is that he was throwing a tantrum in his Discord and scaring off a lot of our potential support.

That was the last straw for me. I resigned as a witness on the spot and, only a few weeks later, walked away from the publishing project that had been the subject of our presentation. Too much drama for me.

Turns out, that was a smart move. Why? Because in 2020 came not only the global plandemic but the sale of controlling St**m assets to a notorious cyberthug. At the time, I was trapped in Morocco because of the plandemic; scroll back on my blog for details because the story is all there.

For a while I still posted, even after the lockdowns ended and I landed in Central America with @michelios, who I'd met in Krakow and is now my life partner. We're together still, living on the side of a volcano in a Costa Rican jungle with no intention of ever returning to First World madness.

Since I last posted here on Hive, Michel and I bought a farm near Volcan Miravalles, in the northern part of the country not far from the Nicaragua border. In fact, we can see Lake Nicaragua from certain vantage points on our road. We're almost a thousand meters above sea level, up here where the air is fresh and the humidity is tolerable, an hour and a half from the beach on the edge of a cloud forest where there are more parrots than people.

(And aracaris, like the one here that flew headlong into our bus and needed some time and a safe space to recover. He flew back into the rainforest soon after this photo was taken, only to return later that week with more aracari friends and a yellow-throated toucan.)

These days I freelance as a professional writer and earn far more than I did publishing my own novels. I still work with rescue dogs; in fact our farm is designated as a sanctuary and skilled foster home for several Costa Rican rescue organizations, like Guayabo Animal Rescue, Charlie's Angels Rescue CR, and UPAnimales. Unlike my days in Appalachia, my efforts here are appreciated by other rescuers and authorities alike and there is zero drama. Shown below are officers from the nearby town of Upala who brought an injured dog for me to rehabilitate, with the support of UPAnimales.

What might be the most interesting bit of this update story could be the fact that I have a new neighbor. Remember at the top of this post when I mentioned being part of a witness team? The lead witness of that team was none other than @sircork , who I've remained friends with for all of these years. He bought a nice piece of real estate just across the cow pasture from Michel and me, after a couple of really awesome visits that let him experience pura vida for himself.

Here he is in the photo below with Michel and a local Tico friend.

I happen to think it's a stunning accomplishment, the way things have worked out for us former St**mians who've stayed in touch. Some of my most enduring relationships with other human beings came from the early days of that blockchain. And I treasure them. Hopefully this post will mark the start of fresh engagement from me. My life in Costa Rica is nothing if it isn't interesting, so I can guarantee lots of good content drawn from it. I'm eager to share.