2012: butcher shop in Howell, Michigan

I was 20 or 21, can’t remember. Apprenticing under a man who still, to this day, is the best butcher I ever knew. We began talking about why I didn’t have a girlfriend after which I asked, “Why don’t you?”

“I haven’t had a bad day in eight years.” He continued, “I was engaged to the love of my life. I was a buyer and meat specialist at [nationwide grocery chain] in Atlanta. I met a 17 year old bagger and couldn’t resist. She’d show up at my house in a cheerleader uniform…” He elaborated in a strange mix of regret and sexual conquest… This man was 43 at the time of our conversation.

When he finished, I responded with, “You are a soulless monster. You’re going to hell.”

“I’ll save you a seat when I get there,” he responded. For the first time in five years, the Word smacked me across the face like a bat. It came from the worst sinner I’d ever met. This is perhaps the most grotesque it gets, and precisely why I introduce him this way.

We had an abusive relationship. In retrospect, he was my Rick and I was his Morty. I hated him. Every day, I sought liberation from him. Yet, I also loved him deeply. When my liberation finally came, my heart wept for this man that God, for some reason, had forced into a bizarre role as an adoptive father to me.

Almost every man in a meatroom has daddy issues

“I hope I don’t have kids.” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want a young man coming to my door and saying ‘where were you?’”, he said with a broken look on his face. I didn’t understand at first. He wasn’t speaking of the future. This man was talking about his past. “I hated my father for leaving,” he said “,and I’m stuck reading his name every time I look at my credit card.”

My stomach turned. Here I was, speaking to a man I considered a monster. He was doing actually fatherhood work — for me. I hadn’t spoken to my own father in five years — not because my dad didn’t love me or didn’t try — but because I cut him out. For five years, he would call. We’d speak briefly, then with the coldest of hearts, I’d go back to daily life refusing to reconcile with him. This is how far I’d fallen. I had replaced my dad with a stranger in a meatroom.

This lead straight into a conversation about my own father. I lied to myself daily, pretending the wound was too great to heal. Eventually, I received an invitation to my dad’s wedding. “You need to go,” the man told me. “Your dad loves you. Sure, he’s not perfect but seeing him is not going to harm anything.”

He was right.

My brother and I didn’t go into the Church. Church was a sensitive topic for both of us. However, while heavily intoxicated, we both showed up to the reception. This was the first time I’d really hugged my dad in years. I felt strange, in a way I still to this day can’t describe. I have a picture of my dad, my brother and myself from that night. I did not experience joy in the moment but now that he’s actually gone — and has been for over eight years, I look at this picture every single day. When I see it, I smile not only on my face but in my heart.

As a journeyman, I would later fill this bizarre surrogate role for other young men. Almost every man in a meatroom has daddy issues. I’m not special. Tom isn’t either.

Confucius say…

“When your father is alive, observe his will. When your father is dead observe his former actions. If, for three years you do not change from the ways of your father, you can be called a ‘real son (hsiao).’” — Confucius, The Analects

After finding my own place as a butcher inside one of the highest-volume stores in the state, I never saw Tom again. Fast forward to 2018. I’ve been mourning Tom for five years and I just buried my father.

My youngest daughter — born six weeks before my dad’s death — is the spot of brightness in a world I can only describe as Sheol. Not only did my dad get to meet her, he rocked her in my living room several times a week as the cancer finished devouring his body.

This would not have happened without Tom.

Back to the meatroom. I’ve been tasked with training several kids. I can’t stand a single one of them. They’re exactly the personalities I despised as a younger man. There’s one, whose apprenticeship has not been approved but he’s a hard worker and I see pieces of myself in him. I tell my boss outright “I’m training him. Not them. Go ahead. Do what you must.”

Tom used to tell me about a time they tried to fire him. He bought a copy of the newspaper where the job was posted. He shoved it in the face of every customer who’d listen and beg them to take his job so he could collect “fun-employment.” He never got his fun-employment. I didn’t get mine either. Instead, I trained Andrew and there was nothing management could do about it.

“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”

I ask Andrew why he doesn’t have a girlfriend. As it turns out, he has a kind-of girlfriend. He’s been dating a trans girl. Remember, the trans-religion didn’t emerge for another couple of years. He’s just legitimately got feelings for another human being.

“Okay.” I say, keeping my objections to myself. I’m not here to preach. I’m here to work and to form the young man. Several months pass by and the two start formally dating. I don’t approve nor condemn. I am not his father.

One day, he comes in pretty rattled. “We broke up.”

“Why?” I ask, slightly confused but somewhat expectant.

“She wants to be a boy again.” He says he told her “You can’t do this because that makes me gay.”

That line detonated every part of the Tom and of the Dad that existed within me. “What did you just say?”

He repeated himself. I responded.

“You are worried about how it makes YOU look? Not about right and wrong? I don’t know how you refer to this person —” (the pronoun war had not begun yet)

“You need to apologize. You let this person fall in love with you. You knew the risks. Now you make this about yourself? We’re done until you apologize. I don’t care of you guys break up. This person is still a human being.”

The same voice that damned Tom to hell was now shouting. This was not my voice. This was something inherited.

Not a physical inheritance but a moral one. Ideology was irrelevant. Here was a young man treating another human being as an accessory — while under my wing.

He wasn’t the first one I trained but he’d be the last. Andrew eventually did apologize and I did finish his training. In 2020, I decided to never take another apprentice again. The demon belonged to someone else now.

2020

It’s the beginning of the pandemic. Michigan has been shut down for a month. I finally decided to follow Tom’s orders and build a gaming PC. He had suggested I build one for better experiences with World of Warcraft and porn but I was no longer bound to his obedience.

At this point, I decided to chase something I had always resisted. Wealth and a (what I thought was) a healthy amount hatred for the US government. I bought a couple Nvidia GTX 1650s and built an open air gaming PC. I could feel Tom smiling as my toddlers playing Minions with Xbox 360 controllers. The real work would take place after they went to bed.

After months, I decided on a coin no one had ever heard of, Ycash. In 2019, Ycash hardforked away from Zcash. For those of you not familiar with crypto, a hardfork is a split into something new but with a shared history. My closest analogy would be the split between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in 1054 or even the split from ancient Israelite religion into Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.

Back to the story. Zcash is a privacy coin. In 2020, it had implemented Sapling, a shielded protocol that makes it highly resistant to censorship and surveillance. However, during its incubation, Zcash made a government of its own. Zcash wasn’t the American government but it was government. I broke a major unwritten rule of crypto mining at the time. I mined coins to a shielded mobile wallet. Shielded wallets couldn’t handle the protocol. Within weeks, my wallet was toast and I sought help from the Ycash Telegram.

This introduced me to a man I consider a brother to this day, Howard Loo — the leader and only person in the Ycash Foundation. We got my wallet working and (through what I now recognize as God) I received a revelation. This man treated a complete stranger with more dignity and respect than I’ve ever received at any job.

I decide I’m going to learn to code. This is the escape. We can have a better life. While my brother is collects pandemic fun-employment, I begin a grueling new training regiment. Days off — code and crypto. Nights — code and crypto. Within months, I am eating, sleeping and breathing code and crypto. Every waking moment not spent in the meatroom, commuting or with my children — code and crypto. I take as many early shifts as I can get. I average three to four hours of sleep per night. Many nights, it’s closer to two.

With the patience of a saint, my wife does not divorce me.

In 2021, I created a Medium account. I wrote a guide on Ycash mining. If you don’t believe me, you can read it here. It’s the first public piece I’ve ever written. This moment was a turning point. A year earlier, I knew nothing about crypto. I was now considered a strange expert of sorts.

I was a cleric to a false gospel.

Ironically, I believe God did push me into writing that piece. However, I just couldn’t let go of this illusion of myself as my savior and deliverer. The blog grew and I quit Meijer in 2023 to build software and write technical pieces for private clients. By all means, this should not have happened.

I did not get rich. I probably never will. The Lord blessed me with friends and skills which I am grateful for to this day.

2025

After two years of grinding and trying to accelerate my brand, CodeAndCrypto, something broke. Our family returned to the Catholic Church on Palm Sunday of 2025. In May of that year, almost exactly seven years after my father’s death, I received two of his Bibles.

After deciding I’d never call another man “father” again, I walked into a Melkite Catholic Church. After attending Divine Liturgy several times, I knew I was home. I went to confession and received a penance I never expected. I was now tasked with fixing my family’s sacramental status. After seven years, I finally embraced a man I can wholeheartedly called “father.” When I hugged him, I wept inside. I wept like the prodigal son. I wept and I wept and I wept. He sent me to finish my unfinished business. I barely know this man.

I still weep. However, this weeping is not a sadness nor a longing. This weeping comes from joy I simply can’t explain. Fr. Elie did not reject me. He directed me, to serve the Father. I’m not sure I’ll ever see the Melkites again. This is not shame. This is obedience. I no longer hide from the wound. I confront it because father told me to, because our Father told him to tell me to.