My name is Garret. I am a professional web engineer and technical specialist now living at an ashram. I also suffer from ADHD, anxiety and depression. For those of you who do not know what an ashram is. It is a spiritual hermitage, traditionally located far from other human habitation. The one I am currently at is 3 hours out of San Francisco in the forest and foot hills of the Sierra Nevada. My journey here was one of serendipity.

In 2015 a childhood friend of mine was raided by the FBI in New Orleans (my hometown). He was charged with wire fraud and trademark counterfeiting on the Dark Web. I was working at a software company in New Orleans at the time working on automation of tug boats that operate out of the Port of Orleans. A subsequent investigation went on into me, they knew of his and mine close relationship as I helped him with many web projects not knowing fully what he was doing. This caused me to lose my job.

This event sent my life into a tailspin that I am just now learning how to recover. With the little savings I had I moved myself to Portland, OR. I was on ADHD and anxiety medicine at the time. I learned once in Portland, that Oregon has banned many doctors from prescribing opiods, which is what my anxiety medicine was. This at first was not a big deal. I was able to fulfill my prescription for ADHD and quickly landed a job with a new start up in Portland. Yet with the new job, past anxiety, and imbalance of medication. I quickly turned to alcohol to soothe my woes. I started breaking down, was getting black out drunk in a city I knew little of and in one event my whole life changed. I was coming back from a drinking episode with my backpack in toe. The next thing I knew is I woke up on a park bench near the river with my backpack no where to be seen. This backpack had my new companies laptop. Little to say, I was fired, I lost my apartment, and I went from making six figures to homeless in the span of 8 months.

After being homeless for three months in Portland and not knowing what to do about my mental health. A dear friend of mine from California contacted me and asked me to come down to the bay area. She knew of an ashram where I could learn to meditate, practice yoga and tackle my mental health issues in a holistic manner.

I have been here for the entire year of 2017 now and am just now starting to feel better. This is the longest I have gone without my medication and I find my practice of meditation and yoga has lended a great hand in my recovering mental focus and handling of my anxiety.

I have also re-booted my freelance career and am helping a friend with a web project for her educational coaching company. With the funds from that I am going to invest in crypto-currency and develop my brand and freelance career further. Because as @matt-a has mentioned in one of his posts. I find it easier to work for myself.

I will be posting on SteemIT regularly about my mental health challenges, web security, meditation, crypto-currency, writing, and general de-centralized topics. I know I am not the only computer geek out there with mental health challenges and I hope what I post about will bring value. We can all come together in the love of technology and the benefit of our well being.

Thanks,

Garret

Matthew Pollak