Chances are you already know who I am because you followed this link here from my LinkTree. But this page is here as a primer because I don't feel that very many people actually listen to me, or believe what I say. And I am as truthful and as much of an open book as I can be about my life, as I have been vlogging and creating content since the beginning of YouTube. Or even before YouTube, in groups, sites and message boards that no longer exist. I've always been here (on the internet) since the days when it was text only and "social media" was BBS and chat rooms. I've always been here.
My name is Steph, I've gone by Ashe too. Again, I'm not picking on or criticizing Portland. It's just that everything is transparent and public knowledge here, though these same things are happening everywhere, because all levels of government and business are corrupt.
Anyhow, I'm coming upon turning 49 years old at the end of November this year, 2026. I have tried so, so very hard all of my life, to be somebody, to be successful, to have a normal life, to have a job like everybody else, and just to survive. I was born into poverty, to a single mom working as a waitress when I was little, and even though she married when I was 6, my parents only made minimum wage. Minimum wage for early 1980's West Virginia at that.
And what life has taught me is that a college degree in the hands of a poor person means nothing. We don't get to class jump. We don't get desk jobs. Especialy being assigned female at birth. If you're not thin and attractive to most men, you won't get most jobs. And the only jobs available to us are fast food and janitorial. So if you're physically disabled and unable to perform those jobs that require you to stand 8-12 hours a day, stoop, bend, lift, carry, etc., well, then there's just not a job for someone like me out there. But there should be.
I damn sure deserve to have a job! I deserve to have had a 25 year career behind me by now! Instead, I'm about to turn 49 with no work history that counts as having worked at all. Small businesses no one's heard of don't count. Being an Uber driver doesn't count. Volunteering doesn't count. Nothing counts. Nothing they tell you to do in order to get a job counts. Job trainings don't help. More education doesn't help. Rewriting your resume 1000 times over doesn't help. Nothing will make an employer hire someone poor, someone unattractive, someone disabled.
When I was 16 was when I knew the landscape had changed. My mom's generation (the boomers) were the last ones who could just walk into a place, apply and get a job. My hometown used to be a working class town where everyone could get a job. But by the time I was 16 and out applying to every minimum wage job that a 16 year old should be able to get their first job at, they didn't want us locals anymore. They wanted the rich preppy kids from New York, New Jersey, Colorado, California or anywhere else they imagined that elite people come from. So only the rich kids (whose parents certainly forced them to work in order to pay their college tuition) from out of state got the fast food jobs I applied to.
Nothing changed when I came home from Seattle to stay and went to college. It was around this time I had an injury to my lumbar spine, causing me to not be able to stand more than 1 minute or walk more than maybe 50 feet at a time without needing to sit. And yes, I've blacked out a few times in those early days, pushing my limits to stand and walk like a normal person. Anyhow, I had wanted to study ancient history and ancient civilizations and an admissions counselor said she wouldn't even have me sign up for that because I'm a poor person from a poor family and so no one will ever give me a job, and she insisted my only hope of ever getting a job was to take the computer classes because it's almost the year 2000 and busineses will need people who know how to use computers!
I'm a nerd! I know computers on my own. In 5th grade we had 2 computers that used floppy disks and ran on DOS. We had computers in high school. We street kids used the computers at the University of Washington library that was text only and I got onto what was called the Dark Side of the Web for all the goth sites, bulletin boards and chat rooms. I've always taken to computers and technology like a duck to water. I'd take apart electronics as a little kid just to see how they worked. Little kid me begged my grandma for a saudering tool which she did get for me, and I'd get stuff from Radio Shack and build my own stuff. When I went to college I had to get a computer and the best we could do was rent to own a refurbished computer and I got into video editing and production, making fan videos of Stargate SG-1 and stupid little videos before YouTube even when the biggest thing I knew of was stupidvideos.com. Back when you needed to put a video card inside the computer to digitize VHS and other cassette tape video formats to edit them. And the video cards came with free software and I was doing that stuff just for fun! I'm a nerd and I can do a whole lot that you would think even one of the nonprofits I've applied to all across the country would have appreciated and wanted someone with all that knowledge on board!
Fast forward a couple decades and I even did the Full Sail University Online program for Digital Cinematography where I learned professional video editing and production. The 2012 MacBook they sent me though, it's been toast for years now, and I really miss the software they gave me to use. My preference is the Adobe Creative Suite. And even back to my childhood, my mom was always into photography and when she took photography classes at the Vo-Tech, she would come home and repeat to me everything she learned. And I learned photography from her. So the same concepts were in the Full Sail classes.
But nothing a poor person can do matters. We don't get to class jump. I've never been given a serious, full time job in my life. I've never been allowed to be gainfully employed and just take care of myself like I always wanted to and intended to. I just wanted a normal life like everybody else and I've tried so damn hard!
Beyond the two accredited colleges, I've gone through training courses where they try to rush poor people through a 4 year degree in 3 months claiming they can find us a job, and those never led to anything either! I've been through those for app development, project management and transportation & logistics. Some people do get jobs out of those, sure if they're thin and attractive. Not me being fat and disabled. We had one take us into big tech companies in Chicago to put us face to face with big wigs who have the power to hire us and they straight up said they won't hire disabled people because they have a company soccer team, or a company softball team, or as a team they run the Chicago marathon every year, so you can't be a "team player" if you can't play the sports! So they only want perfectly able-bodied people born into high income privilige for desk jobs sitting at a computer all day. What do you think I'm doing right now, Einstein?! This website isn't AI! It's not writing itself! I found this old school clone of GeoCities which I used to make endless personal homepages on back in the day! And on AngelFire too! But I'm sitting here on 9/11/2026 in my stupid wheelchair typing away on my Lenovo laptop computer!
Though now it's even worse, considering my level of disability. I've known since 2017 that both my knees need replaced and the level of osteoarthritis was on the level of someone aged 95 or older, as of February 2017. Then here in Portland, over the course of 2024 my health went steeply downhill. I had just gotten on a housing voucher for a year, and started applying for jobs here and I was using a walker at that time. Then it all began on April 1, 2024. I was coming home with my groceries and waiting on the 2nd bus, everything went almost pure white, I couldn't see anything. I felt so lightheaded, dizzy, sick, nauseous - just the worst I've ever felt and I thought I was gonna die there at that bus stop. I really had my "oh shit" moment where I thought this was it, I'm gonna drop, I'm gonna die. Never did find out what happened to me. MRI of my head showed everything was A OK. But I was sick a lot that year. End result was having my toes amputated. Both feet. And life has sucked ever since. Over this year though, 2026, I've had a quick onset of severe pain in my hands, much worse in the right, which always appears a little swollen. My right knuckles/joints are obviously larger than my left hand. I write left handed but do everything else right handed. I feel like I can type as fast as always, so it's not going to slow me down from any desk job - if someone would ever give me a real job that I could independently take care of myself and pay my own rent and such with.
But that's me. That's a synopsis of my life and how I got to the point in life that I am at right now.