AKA The No More Bullshit Tour
One person, 50 states, and a camera pointed honestly at American life — without a mask, without a script, and without apology. Because we have one life, most of us are playing a part, and somebody needs to stop first.
This is a photography project. A road trip across all 50 states — and if it works, beyond that, worldwide. A daily record, published every single day: photos, words, video, and no filter between what I see and what I say about it.
But before we get to the project, here’s what you need to know about the person doing it.
I am 52 years old. I have a chronic illness that has gone undiagnosed for decades — after seeing dozens of specialists and spending over a hundred thousand dollars trying to find an answer. It has nearly killed me more times than I can count — some years multiple times, some years narrowly avoided without ever making it to an ER. I’ve stopped looking for answers. There’s no point in seeing another doctor who won’t listen or read my records, and I have no interest in spending $10,000 or more a year for the same dogmatic, lazy non-answers. I have a disabled wife I care for. I have borrowed against my home multiple times to pay for medical care. For at least a decade, every tax refund went straight to medical debt — 100%. I have been in survival-mode financial triage for longer than I care to count.
I am also autistic. I’ve known something was different my entire life. I told people for years: “I’m half human, half Vulcan.” The clues were everywhere. What was not there was a diagnosis. Or compassion. Or anyone actually listening. Instead I was told I was too serious. That I didn’t smile enough. Meanwhile I was expected to be an overachiever — my parents were both high school teachers, and functioning at a high level wasn’t optional, it was the baseline.
What nobody tells you about going through life undiagnosed is what it costs you. Not understanding why you process the world differently means you spend decades trying to compensate — letting people take advantage of you emotionally, psychologically, financially, and physically, because you genuinely believed that was what being a good person required. It wasn’t weakness. It was the wrong map.
I’ve been speaking up about all of it since I was three years old. The problem was never the speaking. The problem was the listening. The support. The bullshit.
I’m tired of the lying. It has always been there, but it is more common now — and when leaders normalize it, it becomes the air everyone breathes. I’m done with that. This project exists to show that you don’t have to put on a facade to live a good life. You never did.
The pileup — the health issues, the debt, the burnout, the isolation, the abuse, the being taken advantage of — the American dream, the American way. There’s got to be something better. There’s got to be a way to be true to myself and contribute something meaningful to the world around me. I want to break out while there’s still time.
If any part of that sounds familiar, this project is for you too.
The idea is simple.
50 cents for 50 states. And if you’ve lived some version of what I’ve lived, 50 cents for each one that hits home.
A few things that might sound familiar:
- Experienced regular bullying — mental, emotional, and physical — throughout K–12.
- Dealt with a chronic illness for decades while doctors failed to identify or treat it.
- Lived with a sleep disorder that made falling asleep take roughly two hours on average, despite diet, exercise, stress reduction, and sleep aids.
- Didn’t go to urgent care when you needed to because you couldn’t afford it, even with “good” insurance.
- Couldn’t see recommended specialists because the cost was too high or insurance wouldn’t cover them, despite doctors saying that was the next step.
- Borrowed against your home to pay for medical care.
- Watched your tax refund disappear year after year paying down last year’s medical debt.
- Seriously considered declaring bankruptcy after health care debt kept piling up.
- Had to give up life-affirming hobbies because of health limitations, especially at a younger age before retirement.
- Been unable to pay your bills in full and had to stagger payments just to cover the minimums.
- Overdrafted your account because money was so tight and got hit with bank fees repeatedly — even when you were only over by as little as $1.
- Gone into credit card debt because of any of the above.
- Regularly worried you were a few paychecks away from bankruptcy.
- Still owed more on your home than you originally bought it for after ten or more years of owning it.
- Been on such a tight budget that meals like bread and butter or plain noodles were normal.
- Had such a tight budget that you had to live in apartments that were bad for your mental or physical health — loud neighbors, mold, infestations.
- Been clinically depressed for more than a year. More than five. More than ten.
- Attempted suicide or survived a suicide attempt.
- Had social anxiety that made everyday interactions difficult — phone calls, dealing with banks, talking to a manager when you needed help.
- Experienced long stretches of social isolation with no friends or real support system — sometimes three to twelve months at a time.
- Skipped real vacations because you needed your time off for unpredictable days when you were not well enough to work.
- Realized late in life you were on the autistic spectrum — not because someone finally helped you understand it, but because you eventually figured it out yourself.
- Been told your whole life you were “too serious” or “didn’t smile enough” — when actually, nobody was listening.
- Overshared as an autistic trait, then had what you shared used to hurt you or take advantage of you — in a friendship, a relationship, or at work.
- Been left out by friends, by coworkers, by groups who made a point of including everyone but you.
- Routinely found out you weren’t invited to parties or events your “friends” were invited to.
- Never got invited to your high school reunions.
- Experienced emotional or physical abuse in a relationship.
- Had a partner cut you off from other people to strengthen their control.
- Told someone you were being abused — and got shrugged off.
- Helped raise a child that wasn’t yours and carried the financial and emotional weight of it.
- Had to financially support someone with a disability.
- Had overwork contribute to an ER visit that could have become life-threatening.
- Faced discrimination at work after speaking openly about a health condition — then got pushed out with fabricated justifications.
What this project will do:
Help me travel across the country. Meet people. Learn from them. Grow. Photograph their lives — their work, their faith, their housing, their community, the things they’re quietly building to make life better. Share my unique point of view in a world that seems to have gone made. Document what people are actually living through in America right now, including politics and the things nobody in media seems to want to say straight.
Publish every day. Photos, video, words. The real stuff.
Photograph anyone willing to be seen — famous, forgotten, and everyone in between.
Sponsors are welcome — the way patrons have always supported artists, going back to Michelangelo and long, long before. Help to pay the bills, the mortgage, the medical debt, keep the lights on, make it even bloody possible. What no sponsor gets to buy is what I say, how I say it, what I point the camera at, or when and where I point it. I travel like a cat. That’s not a negotiation. In a world where people will say almost anything for a like, do almost anything for a dollar, and grind themselves into the ground for corporations that will never value their loyalty, this project is something different. It always has been. An honest day’s work, in exchange for the chance to do work that actually means something. What you get in return is something that has become genuinely rare: appreciation and representation.
Who I hope sponsors this:
Anyone and everyone is welcome to support this project. But there are a handful of companies I’m hoping will come to the table with gear, resources, and support — in exchange for honest, real-world representation of their products across all 50 states:
- Chevrolet — specifically a C8 E-Ray. It’s the most comfortable car I’ve ever driven, and for someone with chronic joint inflammation, that’s not a luxury, it’s a requirement for 50 states. (I’d ride a motorcycle — it’s where I’ve always been happiest — but my body hasn’t been able to handle that for at least ten years.)
- Nikon — I’ve shot Nikon since 2000. They have never let me down. I’m asking for their top pro-grade Z mirrorless camera and the gear to support it. Loyalty runs both ways.
- Les Schwab — tires and tire support across the country. They’re from my hometown. That matters to me.
- T-Mobile — my carrier. Staying connected across all 50 states isn’t optional. The work gets published every day, regardless of where I am.
- Adobe — Lightroom and Photoshop. I’ve used both for over 30 years. It’s not a cliché, it’s the truth.
- GoDaddy — cloud hosting so every photo I take is accessible anywhere, immediately.
- Apple — a small, lightweight, modern MacBook Pro with an M-series chip, maxed out on memory and storage. On the road, editing hundreds of photos a day on an old Intel machine isn’t a workflow, it’s a punishment.
One more thing this project will do:
People’s lives deserve to be remembered. Not discovered in a box at an antique store decades after they’re gone. I’ve already started scanning slides from a family in Salmon, Idaho — images from the 1950s that would otherwise disappear. This project will continue that work across the country. If you have photos of people who deserve to be seen and remembered, I want to hear from you.
The ask…