Jade part 3

With no company willing to hire me or at the very least take a chance on me, I decided to start a home improvement company. After all I was skilled with my hands. So I had some flyers printed and off went the business. My first customer was a gutter cleaning job which paid me $45 in about an hour. Now I know numbers and I'm thinking umm not bad. That customer in turn passed my number on to his friends and so on and so until I had a legitimate business. I mean I set my own hours. Did things how I wanted to do them. Yet I wasn't happy. This was not the life I'd wanted. I grew to dislike being the "handy man". I felt like my options were limited. Seemed as though everything I wanted I couldn't have. There was always some reminder that I belonged to the justice system. By now I'd been locked up on 4 separate occasions. All stemming from that one case where I was arrested for doing my job. The terms of probation were much to achieve. Not really the whole staying out of trouble thing, but the monthly payment I was ordered to pay was simply too much. I mean I had a live in girlfriend and I was trying to raise a child, all while being one myself. If payment wasn't on time, a warrant would be issued for my arrest. I was always looking over my shoulder. My inner radar for police grew as time went on. Heck to this day I'm always looking to see where the cops are. If there's one thing I know, it's that the police will smile in your face while locking you up. Each time that payment wasn't made it was an automatic probation violation and a minimum of 30 days in jail. All of which was time spent, just waiting to see a Judge. Who by the way could at any point have me locked up for years. Wow what a way to live. I remember meeting my probation officer for the first time. Officer Butler was his name. Ah, he seemed so nice. That is until I called him to let him know that I didn't have the $425.00 payment that was due. Without skipping a beat he replied, "If you don't have it a bench warrant will be issued for your arrest", and hung up the phone. W.T.F. Now what? Now don't get me wrong I was busting my ass finding work, but it was simply too much. The whole system is designed so that you will fail. I mean anyone that's working or has worked knows that you must pass a criminal back ground in order to obtain employment. Although I was running my own business, I would have rather been working for company. So you tell me how do you do that when you're on probation? Trust me you're not going to find many jobs out there that will look past the fact that you've been arrested and charged with burglary and now you're on probation. So what would you do? Well for me I tried everything. from home improvement, to truck driving, to pizza delivery, to drug dealing....
To be continued...