Thoughts – Dan Steven Erickson

Life Back on a 40-Hour Work Week

Acadia National Park – Photos by Dan Steven Erickson

I’m going to be honest. I’ve only worked 40-hour work weeks for about 3 years of my entire adult life. That’s right, I mostly worked part-time jobs in my teens and twenties. Then I went back to school in my 30s. Then I became a full-time college professor and worked about 30 hours most weeks.

It wasn’t until my stint with the USPS, advising at VolState, and now Cabela’s in the past two years that I’ve really worked 40-hours a week. Of course, if you go back to my childhood in a cult, I was working 60-hour weeks as a boy. I’ve done a lot of hard work in my life and I’m not afraid of it.

However, I’m a creative. And one reason I have been able to create such a mass of work in my life is that I’ve had the time to do that. My current situation allows me less time than I’ve had for creating than I’ve had in years. Not only am I working 40 hours a week, I have to drive 45 minutes each way. There’s another 8 hours taken up each week. Add things like shopping, doctors, and working on the condo and it creates a time squeeze.

Why did I take on a full-time job at 63?

That’s a good question. The answer is simple: for health benefits. I’m beginning to question if the time I have to put in to receive the benefits is worth it. There is also a secondary reason. I’m holding off on using my retirement savings a bit longer. And finally, I stay moving and active and social. These are all good reasons to work full time but until I’m 65? That’s something I am reconsidering.

This year I am able to work without my social security being tapped into. Next year I won’t be able to do that if I work full time the entire year. So, I’m considering moving back into part-time status part way through 2027. If I keep my income low by avoiding any major withdrawals from retirement I will be eligible for a healthcare plan at an affordable rate. I could continue working part time and maybe teach an adjunct class. Then again, who knows, maybe life will take another unexpected twist.

In the meantime…

I’ll keep creating. The process to complete projects is just taking longer. Although my studio room is mostly complete, I still need to update my audio. And even though I’m writing several lyrics a week, I have not yet been able to really focus on finalizing songs. I have been workshopping a “sound” for the songs but nothing is complete.

I’ll keep taking time outdoors and doing active things. Last week, I went to Acadia National Park. I’ll post more photos below. I spend quite a bit of the off-time I do get enjoying nature and trying to get in some exercise. That leaves me with even less time to create. It’s a bit ironic that the time when I’m supposed to have more time (after “retirement”) is actually one of the fullest schedules I’ve had in years.

Bear with me as I move through this chapter. My hope is that I’ll be able to get into the swing of getting some creative projects completed on the side if even at a slower pace. I will continue to produce work, it’s just a matter of time. – dse

The Maine Story: How I got Here and Came Back Again

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. I’ve been busy moving… again.

I’m officially back in Maine. But how did I wind up in Maine in the first place. There’s a story, and I think it’s time that I share it here.

The Beginning

First, I have roots in Maine. I was born in Rochester, New Hampshire, just across the Maine border. My father’s family goes back generations in New Hampshire. My mother’s family goes back generations in Maine. I lived in Maine during my early school years. But at the age of 10, my family moved across the country to Washington State to join a cult. You can learn more about that in my books:

The First Return

I’m going to share something I’ve never shared here. I’ve hinted to it, but I think the time is right to go into more detail.

During COVID, my daughter got caught up with the wrong crowd. This led to a substance abuse issue and eventually led to extreme drug-induced psychosis. I’ll spare the details, but there were several trips to the emergency room and months of sleepless nights. I tried to get help for my daughter, but the local resources refused to help, even when I specifically requested they use the Washington State Family Initiated Treatment Act.

I also discovered who was dealing the substances to my daughter and helped to get the dealer arrested in July, 2022. He’s still out on bail with a trial set for early 2027.

So between the lack of help from the community, and the potential danger of retaliation from a drug dealer, I asked my employer for the option to work remotely from Maine. I figured Maine would be more secluded and would give my daughter a chance to dry out and start over. It worked, not perfectly, but my daughter finished high school, has two years of college completed, and has been successful in the service industry.

My employer permitted the move. The president, vice president, human resources director, and my direct supervisor all signed off on the emergency relocation paperwork in late 2022. That paperwork also included notice of my own blood cancer diagnosis and need for specialists and ongoing treatment.

The Ultimatum

I secured a second year of working from Maine using FMLA, or at least that is what I was told. But within a year of moving to Maine, starting in late 2023, my employer started telling me I would have to move back to Washington State or retire. It was an unfeasible choice as moving back to Washington would put my daughter right back into the danger of addiction and retaliation. I was pressured to resign with the promise of part-time work including health benefits.

In Maine, I tried my best to find full-time work in my field. But all I could find was part-time work at low wages. Keep in mind, my full-time employment in Washington was an $85,000 a year position with benefits, not something I wanted to give up, but felt I had no choice.

So, I broadened my scope and started applying for positions in the South and the Midwest. In November, 2024, I secured employment at Volunteer State Community College in Tennessee. I worked there a little over a year while I rented out my property in Maine.

The Second Return

With a plan to move back to Maine in April, 2026, I retired from VolState at the end of 2025. The heat in Tennessee wound up being very problematic for me as one of the primary symptoms of my blood cancer is heat intolerance. Due to a lease in Tennessee, and my rental contract in Maine, that move was slightly postponed. I was, however, able to spend a fair portion of the summer in Maine to escape the heat before finalizing the move this week.

Now, I am back in my modest condo and preparing to return to work at Cabela’s to stay physically and socially active, and acquire needed health insurance coverage until I turn 65 in 2028.

But none of this should have happened. I never should have been squeezed out of my job in Washington. This is especially true because another employee was able to continue her employment from a neighboring state to me. I was told, “that’s different.” There’s more to the story, but that’s all I’m going to say for now.

The good thing is that I’m back in Maine where I can tolerate the weather and where I am at a low elevation. My condition also requires low elevation to add protection from clots and strokes. If my former employer would have simply asked a few questions about my medical needs, they’d have known all of this. – dse

Update on the Move Back to Maine

I’m still in transition and my sites and channels and socials are all in flux. So, I thought I’d give you an update on the move back to Maine.

Status of the Move

First, the place in Tennessee is almost all packed and ready to go. I still have some furniture to sell and a few things to give away, but other than that I feel good about the progress. But there is a huge logistics problem.

I’m moving back to Maine. My daughter, however, is not. Three quarters of what needs to be moved is hers and she still doesn’t know where or how she wants to move it. Things might need to be moved in two different directions. Or everything might just go to Maine for now. Hopefully, this will be resolved by early to mid August as the lease ends on August 31.

I’ve been making monthly trips to Maine to work on the condo and will be heading out on another one soon. While I’m there I’m painting, getting electrical work completed, and selling extra furniture.

My Websites, Channels, and Socials

For now I’m just trying to stay moderately active with my Internet presence. I’m posting less often here. I’m probably going to have to take a break from my 1995/96 song series and Songs from Big Yellow on Youtube, but I will continue to post a couple times a week on the channel.

My BandCamp channel is also on hold for now, although I have a project in the works that I might complete on my next stay in Maine. Glitcsh.com is staying active with a couple posts per week.

Thoughts about my Internet Future

I know I’ve threatened to kill my Facebook and other socials over the years, but I’m looking at things in a new light. The light of retirement.

I spend $400-$500 a year to keep my two websites active. And although I used to make money from book sales, they have dropped off to almost nothing. I’ve started to question the point of keeping the websites. Besides expense, a second issue with websites is that they are hard to deal with when you’re dead. Sure, you can pay years forward, but who’s going to manage them?

So, I’ve decided that my websites will likely go away in the future. However, I’m not just going to toss them immediately. I will give myself another year or two once I move back to Maine and then make a final decision. And when I do, I may look for a free option to keep the sites online in another format.

YouTube and BandCamp will stay. The nice thing about these two platforms is that they don’t cost me anything and I can post as much audio and video as I want. They are basically self-contained and my catalogs will stay alive until those sites close down, which does not look to be soon.

As for social media, the only one I use is Facebook. I do have an Instagram account but rarely post there. I think I’ve deleted all my other accounts. Part of me wants to kill Facebook in the coming year or two. Meta has become glitchy and the political division is exhausting. There are also way too many advertisements. However, it has worked well for two purposes. First, to stay in touch with family and friends at a distance. Second, to make new connections with like minded people in different locations.

As much as part of me wants to, I won’t delete Facebook… yet. I may, however, move back to posting privately to a specific group of followers. Or I might start a new account just for close friends and followers and dump the one I have. As with the websites, I’ll give myself a year or so to consider after the move to Maine. – dse

Rewrite

In 2023, I took a sabbatical from my teaching duties. The goal was to start the process of rewriting my cult-survival story. After taking a course on memoir writing and making the initial changes, I shied away from the project.

The rewrite I envisioned then wasn’t the right fit for my story. My goal was to get rid of any fictionalized parts, change fictional names to real names, people, places, etc. In a meeting with a memoir expert I decided it was all too much for too little return. She recommended in-depth research, interviews with former cult members, and a total rewrite, years of work.

Now I understand something. That is not what this story needs. It doesn’t need to be added to. It needs to be stripped back, reduced from a short novel to a mid-length novella. From over 40,000 words to under 30,000. Bare bones. And so the rewrite has begun.

The original book, A Train Called Forgiveness, was my first attempt at writing and publishing a book. I self-published and sold a modest amount of copies. It gets good reviews at Amazon. But as time passed, something has gnawed at me. Two things. First, the writing could be tighter. Second, there needs to be a thematic change. I’m not telling yet.

I’ve always loved minimalist writers and gritty writers. Cormac McCarthy and Denis Johnson come to mind. I love writers who make the process as much about editing as writing. Writers who painstakingly get rid of every unnecessary word, and then craft what remains into pure art. That’s the goal for the rewrite.

The new book will remain creative non-fiction, but many real names will be used. The title will change to Cult Boy. If you’d like to see the first chapter in progress, you can check it out on my new website, glitcsh.com. Beware, because it’s a work in progress, it might change from week to week as I hone in on the minimalist vibe I’m seeking. – dse

Big Life Update

Life is unpredictable. My move back to Maine is postponed.

I’m not happy about that but it is what it is. The lease is running out where we’re currently living and we’ll have to move locally sometime in April. My daughter will rent a place in Nashville and now that I’m not working, if I must stay in Tennessee, that will be much better.

I’ll be closer to Vanderbilt for my blood cancer specialist. I’ll also be nearer to music venues for performing, (if I choose), and attending shows. Maybe, I’ll even look for part-time work.

That’s the gist on the “life” side of things but I also want to address some changes in my posting schedule here.

I am going to post less often.

Recently, I reduced how often I post on my YouTube Channel. I’ve discovered that I really like that freedom. I’m also developing a new poetry website that will be much more of a static site than a “blog.” And that’s the direction I want to move here as well.

I’ll primarily continue to post news, new releases, and occasional poetry. I’m going to move away from feeling the need to post something just because more than a few days have passed. This new schedule starts now, so don’t be surprised if it’s a couple weeks until the next post. – dse

Glitch Poetry

A couple of days ago, I wrote a weird poem. It had some of the following elements:

Repetition
Coding Symbolism
Purposeful Misspelling
Dictionary Pronunciations
Words broken into Smaller Bits
Use of numbers

The poem was very short. That first poem led me to write an entire series of similar poems. I did some research to discover that I was writing “glitch poetry.” It also might fall into categories like anti-poetry and cyber punk.

Topics include technology, government, news, social media, sex, addiction; the individual struggle to not get lost in today’s overstimulated world.

Here’s short description of the 28-poem cycle I’ve completed:

I believe that error is the only honest data left in a manicured cis-stem. My lyrics are not typos; they are the intentional ruptures of a soul that refuses to be domestic-8ed by the algorithm. I invite the brave soles to stop scrolling, ignore the deaf socials, and enjoy the hum of a reality that is truly {RE}moved.

The project is still in the works. While I have completed the sequence, there is still editing and formatting that needs to be done.

The project started when I was studying how one might actually make a profit writing poetry. I hope you’re not laughing too loud. What I discovered is that the way one might make money as a poet is to create a brand and a specific identity behind that brand. That is what I did. Actually marketing and selling that brand is the trick. I’ve never cracked that code.

In the process, I’ve secured the website: glitcsh.com. The purposeful misspelling is part of the concept. My identity as the creator is not Dan Steven Erickson, but simply: POET. Because I could be anybody trying to survive in a world in which systems are stacked against us. The POET is the superhero, so to speak. The resolve is not to fight evil, but to simply walk away from it all, and in the end, to reduce the ego.

I have not decided when/if I will start the “Glitcsh” site and brand. Currently, my website hosting plan only allows for a single site. I either have to upgrade or return to a cheaper option.

I could start the series on this site, and I might. For now, simply stay tuned as I continue to work on the poems and make decisions on how to present them. – dse