Hi. You may not have heard of me yet, though there is many here who I have made a lot of effort to connect with. I have spent a lot of the last 2 months here since arriving, doing my best to win a following, and from what I read on 'my progress' posts, I think with 300+ followers, I have clearly either got charisma, too much luck, or maybe I'm even good at writing.
EDIT: I just need to add in here, people are saying 'so, make a business proposal' so I am going to insert it near the top of this post:
@l0k1/host-your-witness-or-miner-with-l0k1-seed-capital-sought
I have even won not too shabby amounts of rewards, so far, at least, enough that I have managed to rack up some 600 Steem Power purely from rewards. Maybe 30 was curation rewards, but the rest was from my posts. And I did make some money, but it's not ever been enough, at $278, my biggest win was just enough to pay a month's rent, and man cannot live by a roof-over-his-head alone. One needs internet and food also. In that order, of course!
Amsterdam?
I have considered going back to Amsterdam, where doing the Hobo Journalist thing might not be quite so brutal, especially with winter coming up, as it would be here in Sofia. I can even get a welfare payment, after a couple of months wrangling the bureaucrats. There is drop in centers, but they are full of moroccans and crackheads and general drunkards. Things go missing. But the worst is that outside of the depths of subzero temperatures in winter, you are on the street, yes, you can go to the drop in centers, get coffee and day old pastries, but then they close in the afternoon, and then you are stuck wandering around. But even in the middle of winter, you still have to trek 8-12km a day chasing breakfast and lunch, a warm place to sit, and an internet connection.
I found, thanks to a friend, a place where the police do not come and issue us fines for sleeping there at night. The neighbours are even nice. But it's one place in a whole big city, and maybe there is some nasty person moved in to viewing angle to see our shelters, which often have to be rainproof, since it rains so much there.
So, I don't really know what to specifically ask. I suppose I can explain what the terms are for living here. I need to have a job, to easily get a rental agreement. I did have that opportunity, but I went with a grey market rental, and now I am still stuck in it, and the saving from before has not proven very helpful now, because I still have hassles with 'proof of address' nonsense.
Costs of living in Sofia
It is the general practise here, if you have enough money to pay 3 months rent up front, plus 1 month is a security deposit, that you can get into almost any rental. There is rentals here for around 150 euros/month, even quite close into the centre of town. Central locations would be best, since as I discovered, a great deal on 6 months prepaid 45mbit ethernet into your apartment, does not extend to this outlying area where I currently live. It's 35 euros, for a connection that generally has no more than an hour of downtime every 3 months.
I can, once in a suitable apartment, with a 45Mbit connection, easily host people's miners and witnesses and the like. I have a lot of experience working with Linux and with building servers and miners. This could be part of an arrangement for this. It would also reduce my heating bill. The heating bill is not so bad, maybe 25 euro a month.
This is mainly what I am asking for. Having a formal lease also lets me have some proper proof of address, and anyone who knows how it is being in the crypto-world, in particular, american based services and many european ones, demand proof of address, and one does not simply have an address when homeless.
And food. Well, here it's pretty cheap. I already earn enough on average to eat well, drink myself stupid on a regular basis, and always have a pack of cigarettes sitting around, maybe 100 euro/month if you are careful. I have been trying to be careful, always eating the cheapest, most nutritious food I can get together, cooking it myself. I would very much like to stop smoking, but you know how that is... and I can probably track down a source of untaxed tobacco... about 25-30 euros gets you a kilo...
So, anyway... I figured what the hell, why not put the query out there onto the blockchain, maybe someone wants to help, and doesn't realise, because I, like most people, don't think that complaining about my situation is going to win me upvotes. But since I am about to fall onto the street, what have I got to lose at this point. Post falls flat, nobody helps me out. An hour of writing time is lost. No big deal.
Update
Thanks to kind donations, I at least now have a reliable network connection again. The POS (in this case, also another meaningful acronym) despite having a working network link, three times failed, and forced me to draw cash, costing 3 euros, just barely had enough for the cost of the new sim card, and so I am back to zero, though I have a day's food stashed in the fridge.
My situation has only improved a little at a time over the last year. I tried to win some profit trading Bitcoin, and at first did very well. But then the bitfinex hack, and I got badly hammered from the panic selling. Yes, I should have better spent more, got a proper lease, my residency permit, and with job the bank would have given me credit, and I could have been in a better position. But as you might know, the circumstances of that robbery were very suspicious. I certainly wasn't the only person to be wiped out.
I calculate that about USD$900 sees me in a proper lease, in a better location, covered for 3 months on rent, and a 6 month 45Mbit unlimited connection. It was very stressful last time when I started the job, at the cloud support company, for the first two weeks I was still sleeping often on the street. My benefactor did not see the sense in my saying that an arrangement like this proposed $900 seed capital was better spent money. He spent about this much on things other than putting cash in my hands, and in the long run, it just ensured I would land in trouble again. Being unwashed, wearing dirty clothes, for the first month at a job makes for a bad impression. But it was all that was being offered, despite more sensible options.
So, if people want to help, what I ask for is realistic and effective. And with this in hand, I am set up to reciprocate in internet technical services.
update 2
I am feeling very despondent... I really have no resources to get that project from above off the ground, I can't even feed myself at the moment. All this talk of the hustle of venture capitalism, and I might as well be walking on the ledge at the edge of the Empire State Bulding's rooftops. I am feeling dizzy, and it's probably because I cooked half my what would normally have been whole meal up, because I can't go and buy any more food, until I go pawn my fitlet mini pc, and I'm sure that my groaning stomach is not going to make sleeping very easy tonight either. The jitters from running out of cigarettes is going to really get to me as well.
I look back at the retrospective post, and every single one, almost without exception, is dreamy, abstract, fantastical, and generally, not very practical. I feel like, if I let myself not be practical, and dream I can make it as a Steempreneur, and not just as a Creator and vision-giver - and not go and get myself some practical winter clothes and a sleeping bag, so when I inevitably am unable to pay the rent in the next week or two, that I'm not going to wind up getting sick from the cold.
I am feeling very intimidated and I already just went through 4 days stuck in Plovdiv, with no warm place to sleep, no sleeping bag, no beanie, and knowing absolutely nobody, or nothing about the place to scrape by. I am staying here in Sofia because I know the street life here. I don't think people really understand how my life is right now, or how it has been, for most of the last 3 years.
We can't stop here! This is Whale country!