The Surreal trip to the First Evolver Podcast

A year and a half ago I would have thought most of the people on this site were crazy, including myself. I would have wondered what the hell most of these blogs were about, and thought they were ridiculous. Then a few hits of LSD and twenty eight hours later, which included Time Traveling, Simultaneously existing, and the Grant Morrison speech at the Disinfo conference in 99 changed all of that. But this blog isn’t about then, and that experience, it’s about now and this surreal experience.
I had just figured out that my whole life was a lie, because quite frankly most everything is. But I had a new found power to create my life the way I wanted it from scratch. I learned this through Grant Morrison’s speech and a lot of reading afterwards. I started with Castenada and then Daniel Pinchbeck’s book Breaking Open the Head. Then I needed a quick way of amassing a lot of knowledge about the “counter culture”. This was right around the time of the first disinfo podcast being released, luckily just about the only counter culture website that I knew off. I listened to it and love it. Raymond and Joe the hosts mentioned in that podcast that they had a 50 episode run with another podcast that you could find online “Out There Radio”. So I had found my counter culture crash course, I listened to all fifty episodes in about a month and a half. All along while reading at work every day.
I had turned myself into an information sponge for information of all things that anything to do with the counter culture, Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson, Chaos Magic (Peter J. Carroll, Phil Hine), Crowley, Castenada, PKD, etc……. At some point I decided I want to produce some information that others could sponge up and enjoy as much as I was enjoying this. I wanted to make an impact on other people’s lives like these people were making on mine. I started with writing, which was tough for me because I never wrote anything I wanted to in my life, I barely wrote anything I didn’t want to write. Before now I couldn’t ever imagine writing for fun. I started posting blogs on MySpace and Blogspot. They got a little attention, but only from friends.
During this process of soaking up information I found my way to Reality Sandwich and making friends with Reality Sandwich on MySpace. So when they launched Evolver they posted a bulletin about it on MySpace and I instantly joined. I think there were like forty people on Evolver when I joined. A couple months in I had gotten quite a bit of attention on Evolver for another blog that I wrote and posted. The topic of this blog was how computers are simultaneously the best way to control people, but also the best way to really affect the world. I still haven’t figured out if I’m being used by it or using it, but I’d like to think I’ve been using it to get where I would like to be.
The next step in this relationship was to drive the one hundred miles down from Sacramento to the San Francisco Evolver spore on Shamanism and Psychedelics, and I had a blast. I went to the after party, talked to Regina, and she mentioned I should start one in Sacramento. I talked to both the authors that she had as guest speakers for the spore at the after party also. I mulled it over for a few days and then I emailed her and asked her to email Jonathan with my email. As soon as I sent the email I checked my inbox and she had emailed me at the exact same time to tell me she sent Jonathan my email. So I took that as a sign that I was meant to do this.
I was super nervous for the first spore, and I don’t get nervous. I really wanted a lot of people to come out, and I had like 20 telling me that they were going to, plus all the posters I put up around town. The space I had lined up was a Art and Yoga studio, they were also going to have a yoga instructor and a acupuncturist present at the spore (it was on alternative health). Five people showed up and the space only was willing to let it run an hour and a half. So it didn’t go quite how I had hoped, or planned. And then I built from there.
It’s been a tough long road building the spore in Sacramento, it seems like everyone in this city is noncommittal. I’ve had amazing spores and I’ve had spores that bombed, but I’ve always been happy I did it.
The next thing that Evolver did for me is lead me to the woman of my dreams. We started off with a long distance internet relationship. We lived one hundred miles away from each other. This is something else that I have written fairly extensively about in other blogs as well. Pretty much the only thing I haven’t mentioned in another blog is that we are now having a baby, and we couldn’t be more excited. So now I will continue.
This part of the story is when a little bit of the surreal stuff starts kicking in, at least surreal to me. This crisis with Evolver had been put out in the open. They are just about out of money and need our help. Daniel wrote a blog about it and I commented on it, he commented back, I commented back again telling him I’d help and do whatever I could. Then he commented back asking me to email him. It went from there. It started with email conversation and things I could do to help. Within a couple days I did all of the things that he asked me to do and had come up with a number of ideas of my own of what could help. One of the things I was doing was trying to get interviews set up for Daniel where he would be heard by thousands of people. I had built a very small relationship online with Raymond from the disinfo podcast over the past year or so, so I turned to him. He told me he would be happy to interview Daniel and lead me down some other paths for interviews. I lined up six more interviews.
Then I started working with Evolver on more projects. I’m also trying to work together with Raymond to do something big, something I don’t want to mention until it has gotten to complete green flag. I just finished my first “Evolver the Podcast” that features interviews with Daniel Pinchbeck, and Joao Amorim the director for 2012 Time For a Change. In just over 24 hours since posting it has 142 people that have either downloaded, or listened to it. Raymond got me access to post it in disinfo’s podcast directory as well. Now I find myself thinking back to a year and a half ago, and things I decided I wanted to accomplish. I wanted to inspire those around me, mainly the Sacramento community. Which I think I have done, at least in part with the spore. I wanted to find an amazing person to share this life with, which I believe my soul mate is. I wanted to post something on Disinfo, because that was the only counter culture site I knew. Which I am now doing with the Evolver podcast. I wanted to write a book and put it out for people. I have a one hundred page book finished waiting to be edited and released as a ebook online. I wanted to meet and work with people I looked up to. Which is happening now with Daniel Pinchbeck, Jonathan Phillips, the rest of the RS crew, and the potential future interviews for the podcast. It almost doesn’t seem real, but I assure you it is. I’m working with pretty much the first author that introduced me to this consciousness movement, one of the hosts of the podcast that was my counter culture crash course, and building a community in Sacramento. This too can be real for anyone that decides they want it. And don’t tell me you don’t have enough time or money; I work a 50 hour a week job, finding time to do a number of projects for Evolver, and host a spore once a month. You have enough time and money as long as you have enough dedication and heart.
Anyways enough about me, let’s get to this podcast. It has an interview with Daniel that I really enjoyed doing, and think you will enjoy listening to, plus another amazing interview with Joao Amorim, the director of 2012 Time For a Change. I think you guys will love listening to it so check it out.

http://evolverthepodcast.podomatic.com/