Around the year 2005 or 2006 I was working for a non-profit community arts center – The Resonance Center – Founded by Adam Spiridilozzi.
I learned a lot in those two years about non-profit organization, business, art and community.
The Resonance Center caused me to begin thinking about why creatives have a greater difficulty making enough money doing the work they do, and how to solve issues related to housing and food while people develop their work.
The first rendition of Sustainable Lives was My First Name. The idea behind My First Name was to focus on the development of the self rather than the development of self relative to society, class or family.
As time went on I understood that I wanted to give people the ability to bring their dreams into reality in the simplest most functional way possible. But, why don’t people just live their dream?
Somewhat on purpose and somewhat on accident, I began the process of really looking for some answers. Why is society devised in such a way which limits some individuals from living their dreams?
I lived about six years on less than $10,000.00 a year. I was studying the effects of underemployment in a personal way. I am a veteran, so I was also exploring issues of mental health and well fare related to the after affects of war. In those years of poverty I was a cab driver and gaining sociological perspective.
After several years of driving cab, I was no longer able to handle the hypocrisy of the cab system for which I worked. I quit. I lived with my parents for a while. My shoes had holes in them, my pants were shredded and I couldn’t afford to replace my clothes.
What I did have in those days was what would become my first book. For better or worse, I published it myself. Army Reserve Medic. This book represented the expressions of war and a lead in to this work.
I created a cab company in order to raise myself out of under employment. This company was my first attempt at a social entrepreneurial endeavor. The company became the first step in testing some of my ideas about how to make small changes to industries which raise the level of health and wellness of employees and customers alike.
Because of Utica Transportation there are a number of other medical transportation companies and transportation providers which are better than those which existed before Utica Transportation. Sometimes, the vacuum created by a better company paves the way to demand better services. I am proud of our impact on the transportation industry even though it was quite a small one.
When I decided to close the company I was on a journey toward health and wellness myself. My martial art instructor was integral to pushing me past where I was and to where I was going next.
I decided to go back to taking care of people which is my preferred work in life. Solid employment with a job which I could tolerate allowed me to rebuild my life and continue to focus working on poverty. This job also enables me to go back to school to get a degree which better allows me to promote the ideas I have been working on for almost a decade.
Sustainable Lives is the outcome of countless hours of research, study, development and practice of ideas. These ideas have been proven in small models to be functional. I will continue to work on building Sustainable Lives while also working on developing the proofs so that we can begin to implement sustainability in our lives from government to organizations to individuals and society as a whole.
Sustainability does not typically change or alter culture or lifestyle, it simply allows us to live healthier lives while leaving less impact on the world around us so that others may also attain health, wellness and satisfaction from their lives.