Press Start, No Save

I turned 18 in the eye of a storm.

My dad visited me on my birthday just long enough to say, “You’re on your own now.” No more financial support. No fallback. Just the words “time to grow up” and the space where his shadow used to be.

I was living in the top floor of a rented house in Burnaby with Ajay, Jolly, and my girlfriend at the time. Four people trying to stretch hope into rent. We weren’t building a dream—we were squatting inside one, hoping no one noticed the cracks.

Days, I went to the Art Institute of Vancouver for their $50,000 Professional Recording Arts program. They promised “no math.” That was a lie. The course was buried in electronics, acoustics, and theory I wasn’t prepared for. I looked around the classrooms and saw people who were already in bands, already in studios, already fluent in the language of music. I wasn’t. I didn’t have connections. I didn’t make friends. I just floated through it like a ghost with a student loan.

Nights, I cold-called strangers from a dim upstairs room in New Westminster. The company was called Auto Marketing Group—a boiler room scam disguised as a job. We told people we had buyers for their used cars. We charged them upfront fees. When I made a sale, they handed me a Red Bull and a paycheck with no T4. It paid well. It was fake.

The guy who ran it all, Matthew Loewen, killed himself in 2024. His obituary painted him as a family man. It never mentioned AMG.

In the middle of it all, I was deep into Dogecoin—back when it wasn’t just a meme. I played poker on Pokershibes. Tipped DOGE to strangers on Reddit. Believed in the community. Then Moolah and Dogewallet collapsed. The dream died. It turned into pump-and-dump noise, and I stepped out before it ate me too.

I was working a scam. Attending a scam. Watching a decentralized scam implode. All while trying to stay fed, pay rent, and figure out who the hell I was supposed to be.

That was 2014. No save files. No backup plan. Just survival, hustle, and a stubborn refusal to fold.