I learned the hard way that you have to stick to a strict schedule traveling with the weather. I did not do this and I am in Boston.
What I did not do was plan accordingly as a homeless female under pressure and stress from being targeted. I now realize that houseless people's schedules must be considered carefully in planning AROUND the schedule of the 'normal' mainstream world. For instance, Sundays and holidays are actually the worst for us in this population as there is no place to go. The homeless field would do well to stop giving gifts and making party decorations and spend the money instead on being open on Xmas and other holidays in this hard time of year. Youd be surprised at how many supposedly homeless people have family to go to. Remember homeless people differ greatly in demographics and there is a large demographic of people who are temporarily homeless which is really what shelters are set up for. Many of them are also not trying to produce work like art or writing. They sit around and wait for their housing to come in. This is very different from chronically homeless persons for whatever reasons are not going to get housing.
There are many people who are supposedly homeless but magically if the weather is very bad or if holidays come around they disappear. They have people is the deal there. Either family or friends. For those of us with nothing but street family or people in the system or friends who cant host us (we wouldnt ask anyway) and the weather being bad there is no place to go. Hanging out in MIT on New Years Day is a nice thing to do as one can get work done even without libraries being open but its very depressing. And thats if yer lucky enough and smart enough to be in Cambridge. Outside of this area homelessness is much harder and there are no sympathetic parties or trickle down from wealthy people. In So Cal there are plenty of wealthy people but no trickle down at all. Becuz they have it set up that way.
What I now should keep in mind is that if one does not leave in Sept to start following the good weather then one should certainly leave during school intercession and vacation time. Sometime in Dec I believe. Leaving Dec 1st or so allows one to go to better weather or be on the road at a time where there is going to be nothing to do anyway in a college area and libraries will have inconvenient schedules and the weather is going to be bad so one cant get much done anyway.
NOW I am planning to leave which makes no sense as all the services I need to get work done are back in full swing. And spring is a few months away. It would have been much wiser to take myself and a computer or no computer even, away to someplace with better weather to wait out the holidays. Find something to do away from an area that basically shuts down for the homeless during holidays.
People dont realize that for many people living on the road without funds trying to accomplish something how different our needs are. And shelters barely assist us in our goals. They are set up as temporay solutions for people that are considered between residences. This society has not yet embraced the concept of travlers and other non residents as legitimate members of society.
We end up in the homeless shelter system but we do not belong there.
This is also another point for the organized stalking and harassment system as the framing up of TI's as mentally ill is much easier if they are homeless, housing is available and they are not actively seeking housing from the system. I at least can claim disgust with the legit housing system due to having my health ruined by living in a low income building while planning for college and trying to get my life together (without much help) and basically being ignored and then harassed when I took action. People understand this but still see me as not cooperating with the legit system.
No matter who I talk to people who work in shelters, even the Harvard students some of them anyway cannot shift to a concept of our population being legitamate. Most Targeted persons or persons fighting some other form of oppression are the homeless people who are chronically homeless that seem intelligent and are actively seeking intellectual development or seem 'normal' in many ways, even above average. Unfortunately there are TI's that have gone downhill health wise or mentally there are ways to tell evenutally you get comfortable with your own level of people. But being surrounded by the stupid, the lazy, the criminal, the drug or alchoholic, the severely mentally ill starts to wear the person down and even less is accomplished. You get more done by being around travelers and train hoppers due to their usually being intelligent and talented people and also being fully aware of the lacking in the system.
It seems very silly to want to leave now of all times just due to weather. And anywhere there is good weather during winter there is no panhandling and no computer access usually.
Its very hard to plan appropriately when one is in the system in bad weather. I learned my lesson too late also about certain drop ins here. I realized today how I have changed since arriving. In some ways I am closer now to actually dealing with the problems that put me in this predicament and less living in denial while traveling trying to sort things out. But I also have come to suffer from slowly becoming dependent on thier system. There is one drop in I go to and the place is really set up to foster dependence. Staff even act a certain way as well as treat clients a certain way I now realize is nothing short of mind control tactics to get people to keep coming there and to become lazy, inactive and dependent. Its great that it has so many services and that its open during bad weather but I learned the very hard way about getting stuck in a cycle of going there daily. Also once again this is due to staying here through the holidays.
If I had left during the time of no mainstream world activity then I would not have been so dependent on the homeless system locally. If I had planned to return on Feb 1st I would not only have avoided all the inactivity and lack of access to things I need for my work I would have avoided alot of emotional pain and suffering and that driving me to depend heavliy on the shelter system. I would have returned refreshed.
The problem is also that people in my position are working very hard in hopes of stopping the harassment or we are working so furiously in reaction to being under pressure from psychological warfare. We work far to hard with too little resources, dont eat right, dont sleep enough and dont take vacations. Its also due to the guilt that the system puts on us with psych warfare. We become prisoners to activism. There is usually simply nothing else for us at this point. Our old lives are competely gone, now just vague memories of years past that dont even seem real anymore (due to brainwashing from the gs system) and most of society has been marketed to that we are either mentally ill and 'crazy' or that if we are targeted its not something people want to get involved in. Many people also believe that the campaign is a portion of what it really is and cant understand why we dont get on with our lives.
There is nothing to counter all of these perceptions except our work. That is why DownCastMySoul can quite her blog but she should have left it up.
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