As per my [[Fucks Given]] and the requirements of my [citizenship:](https://shaneandersen.ca/) Fuck the very concept of qualifications; here's an autobiography. ### My pertinent past presented in 444 words: --- I was born around dinner-time on an early spring day in 1987. I grew up in the hills of rural Vancouver. Law was merely a veneer and order little more than an accident of plenty. Though a ten minute drive in any direction would take you where few saw the same sights. My family travelled the Western third of North America extensively while running from the stress of my only siblings. My parents accounting practices. My father's, my elder. And my mother's, my younger. My mother being the state sanctified Accountant. A process I lived through from 5-13 years old. My father? Merely a Bookkeeper. Born as he was, poor, in the first winter of Copenhagen's WWII. Angry as he was, about the same things I still am. When I was 5-years-old I was trapped between languages. If not for my grasp of pantomime and performance, alongside my electric typewriter, I would have been considered non-verbal. But by 12-years-old I was a certified lifeguard and camp counsellor. Though, with some admittedly confused entries floating about the town's newly digital records. I did get run-off/quit when I was 18, but for six summers I looked after children while I was still a child myself. I spent my 18th to 20th years mostly homeless and drifting inside a travelling sales cult before single-handedly cleaning up the mess of its collapse. The cult's last year of eight, being my only. Its dissolution, happening in my hometown. Later, I'd spend a non-consecutive decade as a Certified Financial Planner[.](https://www.fpcanada.ca/) Along the way I'd get a little too good at sales, and I'd go a little bit insane; reconciling my diverse skill set with the solutions I saw, in a way that would matter. I've been a netizen since 1993. And I was eleven when I got the internet on a dedicated line in my own room. I've run, built, left, lost, sold, and been heavily involved with, many businesses. Some were awesome, some sucked; Most were successes, but some were failures. A few, even brutally so. In both regards. I can recall most anything I've ever paid attention to. I('ve) read a lot. And seen more than I'd have liked myself in the flesh. Whether by surviving chronic or acute injury and illness, street warfare, life-saving surgeries, or just hillbilly nonsense, I've had my fair share of near-death experiences. I've dragged the drowning from death. I have seen the dark spectre of nothingness, and I have screamed in its face. I have witnessed tragedy become hell due to the failings of myself and others. I'm qualified for whatever I say I am.