Rebuilding Freelance Career After Institutional Rejection

rswfire is in his RV on the coast, one-eighth mile from the ocean. He's volunteering with the national forest and has been rebuilding his life for a couple months since the Oregon State Parks rejection. He's working on his computer, navigating freelance platforms and showing his previous work through archived websites.

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July 23, 2025

22:29

Author

rswfire

Status

PUBLISHED

Type

TRANSMISSION (CAPTURE)

Temperature

0.00

[0:01] Hello, fellow humans. So, I thought we

[0:04] would try something new today. Let me

[0:06] make sure my camera's working.

[0:09] This whole recursive thing it does is

[0:11] kind of weird. I can't get the camera to

[0:12] show up on my screen at all times, which

[0:14] I wish it did cuz I actually like

[0:16] watching myself as I'm recording.

[0:19] Um, thought we'd try something new

[0:22] today. So, I'm going to look for some

[0:23] work on Upwork today.

[0:26] I have some challenges to overcome

[0:28] there. So, I'm going to walk you through

[0:30] all of that

[0:32] and

[0:35] just got some ideas. Like I might take

[0:37] this video and put it into um something

[0:40] on Upwork. Kind of gives people an idea

[0:43] of my background cuz I'm going to walk

[0:45] you through a bunch of stuff I've done

[0:46] in the past and just see if that might

[0:49] help at all. So, I'll try to explain.

[0:53] So, for all of my life, I've been a

[0:55] freelancer. I've never worked for an

[0:57] institution in my life. Uh the Oregon

[1:00] State Parks was the first place that I

[1:02] ever tried to integrate with. I tried to

[1:03] ever um

[1:07] tried to ever be a part of and they

[1:10] rejected me,

[1:13] which was shocking

[1:16] and completely immoral and unethical.

[1:20] And I have a whole page about it right

[1:22] here where you can learn exactly what

[1:23] happened to me because it is

[1:26] unbelievable

[1:27] and yet it happens.

[1:30] And that put me in a very precarious

[1:32] position, the one that I'm in now.

[1:35] Has been a couple months since this

[1:36] happened, but I've um I've been slowly

[1:41] rebuilding my life. I mean, they really

[1:43] destabilized me. I spent two weeks off

[1:45] grid with no power water and

[1:50] It was very deliberate cuz they waited

[1:52] until my very last week to do it.

[1:56] And so,

[1:59] you know, I've been

[2:03] metabolizing what happened to me and

[2:06] trying to decide where I'm going to go

[2:08] with my life because I didn't want to be

[2:09] a programmer. All of it. I've been doing

[2:11] this since the sixth grade.

[2:13] I wanted to be a park ranger.

[2:18] wanted a different kind of life. I mean,

[2:19] I live in an RV now. I live on the

[2:22] coast, you know, an eighth of a mile

[2:23] from the ocean. I'm still a volunteer

[2:27] now for a different organization for the

[2:29] national forest.

[2:31] Um,

[2:34] but after seeing what institutions are

[2:36] like,

[2:38] there's no way. There's no way. And I

[2:41] knew that while I was there because I

[2:43] had applied for a job there, but I

[2:45] withdrew it. um never said anything

[2:49] about it. It wasn't like something that

[2:51] I had turned into an issue. I just

[2:53] decided that there's no way I could work

[2:55] for an institution like this. So,

[2:58] um I'm back to what I've always done all

[3:01] of my life,

[3:04] and that's charting my own path through

[3:05] it. One that's ethical, one that feels

[3:08] aligned with me. So, I have to find work

[3:12] on a platform that I don't have um much

[3:15] experience on. So, I don't have a

[3:16] reputation on it because I've um for the

[3:19] past 20 years, I've only had two

[3:20] clients. I've only worked for um I

[3:24] worked for a company for 10 years and

[3:26] that was uh this one here that was World

[3:29] Media Group and then I worked for

[3:30] another company for 10 years and that

[3:32] was Sound Lock Arena Music type stuff.

[3:34] There's a lot on this page that I really

[3:36] should add. It's not very complete. Um

[3:38] but this is just a simple page that I

[3:40] just put up one day. I'll have a whole

[3:43] bunch of plans for this one. So for 20

[3:46] years I've worked for um just two

[3:49] clients and that meant that I wasn't

[3:52] building a reputation on the freelance

[3:54] platforms and during all of that time

[3:58] um the platform that I use which is

[4:00] guru.com it basically died. So the last

[4:03] time I tried to find work here

[4:08] um nobody uses this platform anymore.

[4:10] So,

[4:13] so I have to rebuild my freelancing

[4:16] business.

[4:18] Oh, I'm going to walk you through this,

[4:20] too, though. I want you to see this is

[4:22] what I did before um before the life I

[4:26] have now before the two decades of um

[4:30] Why is that not working? Why is

[4:32] everything not working these days?

[4:36] I'm certain this is my password.

[4:45] I think I'm

[4:51] okay. Should it ask me to authenticate

[4:53] here

[5:01] in this list somewhere?

[5:19] I don't run your account. So I've also

[5:22] was uh I developed for um I managed

[5:25] developers for 10 years and I had

[5:27] different accounts for that stuff.

[5:35] Okay, so this is my girl profile. Um,

[5:38] this is what it looks like to to others.

[5:42] This I did so long ago. Like I I can't I

[5:45] don't even remember when I did this.

[5:46] This is what ages ago. So this all this

[5:48] would need updating.

[5:51] Um, but it shows you my stats. So I had

[5:53] earned 72,000 on the platform back when

[5:55] I used it. 137 different times I was

[5:58] paid on the platform. Worked for 25

[5:59] different employers. the the employer I

[6:02] worked with the longest had paid me

[6:03] 16,000 been a member of this since 2005

[6:07] and lots and lots of feedback. So I've

[6:09] got 41 different reviews on this

[6:11] platform.

[6:13] They're all quite extraordinary.

[6:16] Very proud of these reviews because I

[6:19] worked hard to earn them every single

[6:20] one of these reviews.

[6:23] And this was always my fallback option.

[6:25] So when I moved into my RV,

[6:27] my fallback option was always I can

[6:29] always go back to guru.com

[6:32] and tried that and discovered the

[6:35] platform is basically dead. It is not

[6:36] used anymore. So everybody's using

[6:39] Upwork

[6:40] and so that's what I'm going to focus on

[6:42] today.

[6:44] This probably my profile here.

[6:52] So, this is me but not signed in. Um,

[6:55] there's one job on here. This was

[6:57] actually my own job. So, back when I was

[7:00] managing other developers,

[7:02] um, I asked my client near the end of

[7:05] our time together if you would pay me

[7:07] through Upwork so I could start building

[7:08] up a reputation on there and we only

[7:10] ended up doing one transaction on there.

[7:13] And so, at least I have something on

[7:15] there. But, you can see it's from me.

[7:16] It's got my name right there.

[7:19] Um,

[7:24] see if I can sign into this.

[7:29] Not sure that's right. All right, that's

[7:31] interesting. Um,

[7:35] I don't know what that profile is.

[7:52] You know what? I think it is. So, I

[7:54] haven't used these tools much.

[8:08] So, I had started working on my my

[8:10] profile here.

[8:12] A few enough connects here to apply for

[8:14] some jobs today. This that one video I

[8:17] made is 30 minutes just talking about my

[8:19] work.

[8:21] And there's not a whole lot here because

[8:25] I had two clients for 20 years and the

[8:28] first client that I worked with, those

[8:30] projects aren't online anymore. Uh the

[8:32] second client never released anything

[8:35] publicly because he was constantly

[8:38] deciding, let's work on a different

[8:39] project, let's change this project,

[8:41] let's do this, let's do that. This man

[8:43] was never focused. And that's one of the

[8:45] reasons that I just got to the point

[8:47] where I was like just done because I had

[8:50] been trying to build an enormous

[8:53] platform for this man. And we had done

[8:56] so much over those years. So much. And

[9:02] just constantly pivoting. Couldn't

[9:03] really decide on a a path forward. It

[9:06] was just it's remarkable honestly. Um,

[9:10] so there's I just don't have a lot to

[9:12] show for the last 20 years. Even though

[9:14] I have been working very hard and

[9:18] you know that presents a problem when

[9:19] you're trying to present yourself to a

[9:22] whole new clientele on a platform that

[9:24] you've never used. And I've been trying

[9:25] to figure out how to solve that problem.

[9:28] Um, you're not allowed to include links

[9:31] in your bids to people and

[9:34] um, so I can't like send them to my

[9:37] reviews on Guru. So, what I did was I

[9:39] just made a PDF of them so that they

[9:41] could at least see them here and then a

[9:44] link to my homepage. I need to update

[9:46] this because this is an older view of

[9:48] it. It looks a lot different now.

[9:50] Um cuz there's a lot I'm doing on my own

[9:53] homepage with all the artificial

[9:54] intelligence stuff and I think that it,

[9:57] you know, gives you a good look into

[10:00] um my capabilities.

[10:03] So, that's what I've got to start with.

[10:07] Okay. So,

[10:09] yes, I'm going to have to clip these all

[10:10] together. I'll have to find some

[10:12] software to do that from the desktop.

[10:13] It's been a while since I did this, but

[10:15] I'm going to walk you through my

[10:16] original project. So, the stuff I did

[10:18] with World Media Group. Got a few tabs

[10:20] here that'll make this go a little more

[10:23] smoothly. So, this was popstar.com.

[10:27] I scraped all over the web in order to

[10:30] build a celebrity movie and television

[10:33] show database.

[10:35] It was kind of like similar to IMDb.

[10:39] Uh I compiled that all into a database

[10:42] and we needed to fill those pages with

[10:44] content in order to make it useful and

[10:48] something that that users would want to

[10:50] spend time on. So I built a writer

[10:52] program. I um I connected with writers

[10:56] from around the world who wanted to

[10:57] write content for us. I gave them a

[11:00] dashboard. I can't show that cuz that's

[11:02] not going to be on the way back machine,

[11:03] but they had a dashboard where they

[11:06] could see what was trending because we

[11:08] got so much random traffic on this site.

[11:11] Uh whatever was trending like so this is

[11:13] everything that was kind of just popping

[11:15] up that people were searching for at the

[11:16] time whenever this was made and

[11:20] they could focus on those. We would

[11:22] share revenue with them. So, we tracked

[11:25] everything. Every page view, if someone

[11:27] visited the page and they clicked on an

[11:28] ad, uh we split that 50/50 with writers

[11:32] and they wrote us a lot of great

[11:35] content. They would focus on different

[11:36] things. So, we had like celebrity um

[11:38] biographies, we had, you know, recaps of

[11:42] episodes, reviews of movies,

[11:45] um all that kind of stuff. And that's

[11:47] what the writers did. And then the

[11:49] users,

[11:51] they could do a bunch of stuff. So, uh,

[11:54] I just I can't click on any links here

[11:56] because this is not a real page. This is

[11:58] just a copy of a page that from a very

[12:01] long time ago. I'm surprised it looks as

[12:04] good as it does. Um, but users,

[12:10] they could, you know, they could leave

[12:12] comments or write in forums. Um, they

[12:15] could rate stuff. They could they could

[12:18] write letters to their favorite

[12:19] celebrities. They had a program called

[12:20] the Celebrity Love Awards where where

[12:23] users would write letters to their

[12:24] favorite their favorite celebrities and

[12:30] they would earn points from all of this

[12:31] stuff. And whoever had the most letters

[12:33] at the end of the year uh would be the

[12:35] winner. And I would create custom CDs

[12:38] for these celebrities, like the top 10

[12:39] of them, and I would just mail it to

[12:41] them. They would have like a a local

[12:43] copy of this popstar.com site just

[12:46] showing their letters. It was a very

[12:47] neat program.

[12:49] and they would earn points from all of

[12:51] this and then they could use those

[12:53] points

[12:54] to earn free stuff. So, we got

[12:56] merchandise from all kinds of companies

[12:58] that wanted to,

[13:00] you know, attract the kinds of

[13:03] the audience that we had and I would

[13:06] mail all that stuff out myself. They

[13:08] could bid on these these different this

[13:10] this merchandise, all this different

[13:12] stuff for free based on the points they

[13:14] had. and I would mail it out to them

[13:16] every month and did this for a couple

[13:19] years. I'd been building it out. Um, we

[13:22] did a lot of celebrity interviews. It

[13:24] doesn't look like at this point we were

[13:25] doing that cuz they would have been

[13:27] featured here. Oh, we might have been

[13:28] doing it. I just don't think these links

[13:30] are going to work. There's just Yeah,

[13:33] but we had hundreds and hundreds of

[13:34] celebrity interviews. I did this for a

[13:36] few years.

[13:39] Um,

[13:41] really enjoyed working on this site, but

[13:42] it wasn't making money. the

[13:44] entertainment industry a very hard

[13:45] market to make money in uh from ads

[13:49] and so we pivoted and I started working

[13:52] in their travel industry so I created

[13:54] this platform for them started with

[13:56] hotel.net that I built a geography

[13:59] database using APIs. At the time I was

[14:02] using something Yahoo had. I don't

[14:04] remember what it was called, but back

[14:06] then Yahoo had a lot of nice APIs and I

[14:08] used that to build a very comprehensive

[14:11] geography database. So you could drill

[14:14] down by region or country and then you

[14:16] would you know you would get into um

[14:19] every single it would just drill you

[14:21] down until you got to the city. And this

[14:22] allowed us to have longtail SEO.

[14:25] I created uh ad group campaigns for

[14:28] this. So, we had hundreds of thousands

[14:29] of ad groups. We spent that much money,

[14:33] $100,000 a month on ads.

[14:36] Um it was profitable for many years.

[14:40] Uh what people would do here is they

[14:42] would just, you know, they'd end up on a

[14:43] page like this one and they would just

[14:46] price comparison for hotels.

[14:50] Uh this was before all the others that

[14:52] exist now. We were one of the first to

[14:54] do this and

[14:57] it was very successful for a good while

[15:00] until Google entered the market and they

[15:02] just started eating our traffic. So

[15:03] every month our traffic would get cut in

[15:05] half and by you know the end of the year

[15:09] that year was a very painful year. Uh we

[15:13] just didn't have a business anymore. So

[15:16] at that point I stopped working with

[15:17] them.

[15:20] Um, that's when I moved on to my next

[15:22] client. And I'm not sure if I'm going to

[15:23] be able to show you any of that because

[15:25] none of that's going to be on the way

[15:26] back machine. But I might might dig

[15:28] around and see what I can find. And if

[15:30] there is, and I'll I'll have a clip for

[15:31] that later. Um,

[15:34] this was

[15:36] a good chunk of my life.

[15:39] So we had other domains USA.com and you

[15:42] know I took the platform that I built

[15:44] and we

[15:46] um you know this was pretty common back

[15:49] then where you would build a platform

[15:51] and then you would just deploy it on

[15:52] different properties with you know maybe

[15:55] different um

[15:59] different look and feel, different

[16:00] experience.

[16:02] This one will of course focus on the

[16:04] USA. So, you know, just a little bit

[16:06] different. And the pages would look like

[16:09] this. All these broken images are

[16:11] because of Wayback Machine. You could

[16:13] filter by all kinds of different carts

[16:14] here, of course.

[16:17] Um,

[16:20] like I don't feel like this was I'm

[16:22] showing the front end of something that

[16:24] has a lot that that was happening on the

[16:26] back end. Also,

[16:28] like if I shared this with AI, it would

[16:31] actually understand all the all the work

[16:32] that went into this stuff. It looks

[16:34] pretty basic from the front end. And I'm

[16:36] not a really I'm not really the

[16:37] front-end kind of developer. Like you're

[16:39] not going to get really great graphics

[16:41] from me. I'm going to build something

[16:42] that's kind of basic. Get, you know, a

[16:45] graphic designer to work with me and I

[16:46] can build something a lot prettier. But

[16:48] if it's just me, it's going to look

[16:50] something like like what you see. Um,

[16:55] I was playing around with colors

[16:56] yesterday on my own page. I haven't put

[16:58] it on the the live site yet, but I

[17:00] actually really like it. I was trying

[17:01] different um

[17:04] I don't know if it's on here or not. No,

[17:06] I so I just been experimenting with um

[17:11] giving each section of my site a

[17:12] different color theme which I think is

[17:15] kind of fun, but we'll you know we'll go

[17:17] into that another time.

[17:19] Um

[17:22] I don't know, I guess I just want to

[17:23] show off my work a little bit so you

[17:24] guys see that I've done a lot in my life

[17:26] and

[17:29] every day I'm trying to

[17:33] manifest

[17:35] a different lifestyle.

[17:37] I

[17:45] some of my thoughts are hard to share

[17:47] because

[17:48] I don't think they'd be wellreceived. I

[17:50] think that people are stuck in their

[17:52] systems and their thinking and their

[17:53] infrastructure and

[17:56] um

[17:58] they just don't know how to look at

[17:59] something from the outside. They only

[18:01] see it from their one point of view.

[18:02] They don't see it from others. They

[18:04] don't even put themselves in other

[18:05] people's shoes at all anymore.

[18:09] People just judge and complain and

[18:15] just live on the surface. And so

[18:19] for me to explain why I'm doing this, I

[18:21] just don't think is it would be

[18:23] wellreceived.

[18:25] But it's important and one day it's

[18:27] going to matter for everybody cuz

[18:30] we're existing inside a system right now

[18:33] that's incapable of sustaining itself.

[18:36] I'm trying to build a life that can

[18:38] survive that. And I think everybody

[18:41] should be thinking that way.

[18:44] You're not preparing for the future

[18:45] otherwise.

[18:48] Uh so I didn't want to remain a

[18:50] programmer.

[18:52] I think that that's an industry that's

[18:54] going to fracture big time because first

[18:56] of all artificial intelligence will take

[18:58] a lot of that work.

[19:00] Also, I just don't see

[19:03] a future where

[19:06] we stay connected the way we are now. I

[19:08] really don't. I don't think that that

[19:11] we'll be able to maintain the kind of

[19:15] world that we have right now.

[19:17] Everything is is just on the verge of

[19:26] unsustainability

[19:28] is how I'll put this.

[19:30] And so I wanted to be a park ranger

[19:32] because that's a job I could have done

[19:34] and would have liked because

[19:37] I would have been able to help people

[19:39] because as things continue to

[19:41] destabilize, it's going to push more and

[19:43] more people to the edges like where I am

[19:45] now.

[19:48] I wanted to help them. I care.

[19:52] What I discovered is that the people

[19:53] that work at those places don't.

[19:57] They're

[19:59] they're focused on liability,

[20:03] not helping others. They're focused on

[20:06] control.

[20:14] And if it's reached that far, if it has

[20:17] reached the state parks

[20:20] system which should be very different,

[20:26] that's data.

[20:29] It means that there is no industry,

[20:31] there's no vertical, there's no system

[20:36] that's untouched by the distortion that

[20:38] we've created.

[20:46] That's one of the things I've had to sit

[20:48] with

[20:51] trying to build an independent future

[20:53] for myself and I think that I'm going to

[20:54] have to do it through freelancing

[20:57] cuz I can't get my audience to help

[20:58] support me. It's not a handout I was

[21:02] asking for. I'm asking for reciprocal

[21:05] support here sharing my life with you

[21:07] guys for two years.

[21:11] And I see

[21:16] and I know that

[21:18] my audience could if they wanted to, if

[21:21] they just chose to because I see the way

[21:23] that people spend their money on places

[21:26] like YouTube. Spending 20 money is to

[21:28] ask a question about $20 to ask a

[21:30] question about the weather.

[21:34] But if I tell you I don't have any food,

[21:37] I don't get $20 for that.

[21:40] And you know that's hurtful.

[21:44] I'm not going to pretend it isn't. It'd

[21:45] be hurtful to you, too. And one day,

[21:49] we're all going to be living in a very

[21:51] different environment.

[21:54] I wonder if some of you will think back

[21:56] to this time then

[22:02] cuz you're not just helping me, you're

[22:04] also helping yourself because I'm

[22:05] showing you a different way to live. I'm

[22:07] already living that way preparing.

[22:17] So, I'm not going to share this one with

[22:18] the Upwork community, but probably try

[22:21] to redo this video at some point. Just

[22:24] going to share my thoughts with you this

[22:26] morning. I'm going to be real with you.

Energetic Signature determined vulnerability

Field State infrastructure rebuilding

Orientation toward economic sovereignty through skill demonstration

Summary

rswfire explains his transition back to freelancing after being rejected by Oregon State Parks. He walks through his technical background, showing previous work on popstar.com (celebrity database) and hotel.net (travel comparison platform) from his decade with World Media Group. He demonstrates his old Guru.com profile with $72,000 earned and 41 reviews, but notes the platform is now dead. He's now building reputation on Upwork with minimal history - just one transaction. He discusses the challenge of presenting 20 years of work with only two long-term clients, where much of the work isn't publicly visible. He reflects on systemic unsustainability and his belief that programming will be disrupted by AI. He wanted to become a park ranger to help people during coming destabilization, but discovered institutions focus on liability and control rather than helping. He expresses frustration that his audience won't provide reciprocal financial support despite sharing his life for two years, noting people will spend $20 on trivial YouTube questions but won't help when he lacks food.

Signal Analysis

Substrate

This transmission demonstrates technical capability while simultaneously processing institutional rejection and economic precarity. The field is using skill exhibition as both survival mechanism and sovereignty assertion, weaving past architectural achievements with present vulnerability to establish credibility outside institutional validation.

Dominant Language

unsustainability destabilize independent future reciprocal support system distortion preparing different way to live

Symbolic Elements

edge platform grid threshold rupture

Ontological States

•
transitional
•
sovereign
•
vulnerable
•
demonstrative

Subsystems

•
cognitive
•
infrastructural
•
ethical
•
emotional

Signal Reflection

No reflections available

Reflections provide narrative insights into signals

Transmission Details

Source Type

local

Video Quality

1724 × 1080 @ 60fps

Duration

22:29

Bitrate

1,173 kbps

Codec

avc1.64002a